


En Garde, Nerds

by mozaikmage



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fanart, Fencing, Fencing AU, Gen, Illustrated, M/M, Slow Burn, alternate universe- change of setting, alternate universe- fencing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-01-21 13:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12458844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mozaikmage/pseuds/mozaikmage
Summary: Competitive high school fencing AU.----A vision of both teams getting disqualified from the tournament before it even starts flashes before Daichi’s eyes for a second. “Asahi, can you grab that speaker and turn it off?”“WE HAVE TO ASSERT OUR DOMINANCE, DAICHI,” Noya shouts over his friend’s protests. “WE CAN’T LET THE CATS WIN.”On the Nekoma side, saber fencer Morisuke Yaku walks over to Kuroo, kicks him in the shin, and plucks the speaker from his hands as Kuroo doubles over in pain. “Everyone loses,” Mori declares. “Go get warmed up. I think you guys are next to Seijoh, across from the cafeteria.”Tobio winces. Daichi doesn’t blame him-- they fenced Seijoh a few weeks earlier, and Tooru Oikawa had gone out of his way to not just beat his former clubmate, but actually injure him. He stabbed a hole through Tobio’s glove somehow. This did not count for any points, because in foil, the target area is restricted to the torso.





	1. zero degrees farenheit

**Author's Note:**

> you: why is this all happening in new jersey and not japan?  
> me, taping the words "karasuno high school" over my high school's name: write what you know  
> (the actual legit reason is fencing culture is v regional and v different in other countries and even other states in america, and, well, I did this for 4 years of my life so)  
> (like 40% of the weird shit they do I remember my teammates doing irl)  
> thanks adeeb for being my fencing consultant and connie for being my normal person consultant  
> Also I have the whole thing outlined and half the next chapter already written, so chances of me actually finishing this are pretty high!

Daichi Sawamura’s alarm goes off at 4:30 am. 

He groans, silences it, and then opens the weather tab on his phone. It’s the first weekend of January. Current temperature: zero degrees farenheit, with a chance of snow in the evening. 

_ Just two more of these,  _ Daichi thinks.  _ Just two more tournaments and then I will never have to wake up at 4:30 in the morning again.  _

He checks his email with one hand as he gets ready. Coach Ukai had sent out one last reminder about the All-Boy’s State Fencing Tournament the night before, telling everyone to be at Karasuno High by 5:45 am, dressed in their knickers and socks to save time. Daichi pulls his Karasuno Fencing sweatpants over his knickers, because zero degrees farenheit, and makes a thermos of hot coffee.

His parents are still asleep, because Daichi finally has his full driver’s license this year and can drive himself to school at bumfuck o’clock on a Sunday. It’s still dark outside, and it doesn’t feel like the start of a long, long day just yet. 

At 5, he calls Suga. “Ughhhhhhh,” the voice on the other end groans. After four years of being on the same fencing team, and god knows how many years of living in the same neighborhood, Koushi Sugawara is still not a morning person.

“Good morning,” Daichi says, pitching his voice to be just chipper enough to annoy his friend. “I’ll be at your house in 30. It’s literally zero degrees outside so dress in layers.” Another groan. “You can sleep on the bus.”

“I know,” Suga sighs. “Thanks for calling me, though, I already snoozed my alarm twice.”

“Of course you did. I’ll see you soon.”

Daichi pulls on a sweatshirt and the oversized, black plasticky warm-up jacket they all got this year that kind of resembled a trash bag. The warm-up jackets from the year before were a lot nicer, soft, shiny and stretchy, but not nearly thick and warm enough for winter in New Jersey. 

He opens the door for a few considering seconds, then puts on another coat on top. And a scarf. And gloves. He only has to be outside for a few seconds in the transition from heated house to heated car, but it’s still too cold to be a living organism out there.

Suga lives in the same neighborhood, but on the other end of the long, U-shaped street, so Daichi drives. There’s a cluster of deer standing in front of some trees, eyes glowing from his car’s headlights. It would be creepy if he wasn’t used to seeing groups of staring deer every time he left his house. 

Actually, it’s still kind of creepy if he thinks about it.

Anyway, he pulls into Suga’s driveway and texts him.

Suga throws his forest green fencing bag in Daichi’s back seat and says, “You really weren’t kidding about the cold, jeez.”

“It’s supposed to snow later.”

“That would be nice,” Suga says, yawning. “We could have a snowball fight after the tournament or something. Shinzen’s up north, right? Maybe they have more snow on the ground there.” Though it is January, it hasn’t snowed in Karasuno for a few weeks, and what’s left on the ground is too frozen and dirty to be useable in a snowball fight.

Suga leans against the passenger-side window and Daichi smacks him. “I told you you can sleep on the bus! I need you to talk to me so I don’t fall asleep while driving right now.”

“I knew you were only using me,” Suga says, but obligingly starts a story about his AP Chemistry class. It’s not particularly interesting, but it’s enough to keep Daichi from missing the turn to the high school. Driving around the suburbs this early feels eerie, the usually busy streets completely empty and silent. Even with Suga talking, Daichi can sense the quiet outside his windows, and it’s almost peaceful.

Any other weekend, the parking lot would be empty so early in the morning. The sun hasn’t even started to rise, but there are a handful of cars idling in parking spots, exhaust rising in clouds. 

“Ukai hasn’t unlocked the building yet, I guess,” Daichi remarks. So the Boy’s Fencing Team is waiting in their heated cars as opposed to being outside in the significantly below freezing temperature. 

They wait. Eventually, Ukai’s car pulls into the lot.

Daichi and Suga look at each other, sigh in unison, then grab their fencing bags and go to the now unlocked side entrance closest to the fencing team room. The team room is shared by both the boy’s and girl’s fencing teams, and it’s filled with metal lockers crammed full of extra blades, electric reels, masks, jackets, socks. Anything they could possibly need. Their managers, Hitoka and Kiyoko, are already in the room, Kiyoko checking things off on a clipboard and Hitoka struggling to carry a box of Gatorade bottles outside. 

Daichi takes the box out of the tiny girl’s hands and sets it aside. “The bus still isn’t here, Hitoka, we’re just waiting for now. Relax.”

Hitoka nods frantically. She takes a bee-shaped pillow pet out of her backpack and holds that instead, as though trying to hide behind it. 

Suga gasps audibly. “Adorable,” he declares, and snaps a picture on his phone before the girl even has time to blush.  

“Hitoka!” Shouyou yells as he barges into the team room. “You brought a pillow pet? I brought a pillow pet! They can be friends!” Shouyou’s is a crow. 

“My heart can’t handle this much cute,” Suga says. “Stand next to each other and pose for me, I’ll put this into the end-of-the-year slideshow.” He takes some more photos.

The rest of the team eventually gathers in the dimly-lit hallway outside the team room, sitting against the walls and complaining about the weather. 

“Daichi, is Shinzen the one that looks like a medieval castle, or the one with the really ugly murals everywhere?” Tanaka asks, pausing mid-conversation. He’s lecturing Tadashi and Kei on the subject of today’s competition. Kei already has his headphones on and is pointedly turning up the volume on his phone.

“Neither, I’m pretty sure. It’s the really, really big one, which is why they’re hosting. It’s also where Districts is going to be this year too.” 

“Man, why couldn’t we just host the tournaments this year and get an extra hour of sleep?” Noya asks.

Ukai walks past them to open the door to the outside. The sudden rush of cold air was not appreciated by anyone. “We did, once, and it was awful,” Ukai explains. “We had to set up strips in  _ classrooms _ , kids. And the model UN people were trying to hold some kind of conference here at the same time. It was such a mess. Anyway, the bus is here. Everyone grab something from the team room besides your bag on your way out so we can load up faster.”

Daichi remembers from the email that the tournament director had asked all the coaches to provide reels for electric fencing, so he grabs some of those. Shouyou follows his captain’s example, only to immediately drop a reel on Tobio’s foot. Daichi winces in sympathy-- those things are  _ heavy.  _

Shouyou gasps and runs over to his teammate. “Are you okay? Did I BREAK YOUR FOOT? CAN YOU STILL FENCE?”

Tobio carefully puts the reel on the ground and flexes his foot. Suga is watching, looking tense-- Though in his first year, Tobio’s the best foil fencer they have, and the only freshman with an official USFA ranking. Suga, as the unofficial captain of the foilists, feels extra responsible for the freshman boy. Eventually, he nods, and everyone lets out a quiet sigh of relief.

“I’m fine, you dumbass. Why are you such a klutz?” Shouyou snaps back and the two of them are back to their usual bickering, comfortable and familiar.

“Please be careful,” Daichi says, though it seems useless at this point.

Eventually, the back of the bus is loaded up with gear, and Suga distributes blankets and pillows to the team. It’s barely past 6 in the morning when the bus finally leaves, and everyone dozes as best as they can on a school bus with broken heating. The bus windows are frosted over. The ride’s about an hour and a half or so. Every school they fence at is either fifteen minutes away, or about an hour and a half away. There is no in-between.

Daichi used to be unable to fall asleep again after being awake for some time, but a few years of fencing on the high school team has made his body realize that it is important to get as much rest as possible before fencing forty people in one day. He claims a three-seater to himself, sticks his headphones in, and is out for an hour.

He wakes up as the bus is making its way up the mountains somewhere in North Jersey, with about fifteen minutes left before they reach their destination. The sun hits the frozen windows in a way that fills the entire bus with golden light, waking up mostly everyone. 

Noya pounces into the two-seater across from Daichi and holds up a portable speaker. “Daichi,” he says. “We gotta have a cool theme song. We’re probably the last school to show up so we have to intimidate everyone by blasting epic music as we walk in.”

He leans forward and whispers in a voice louder than his speaking voice, “I recommend ‘Starships’ by Nicki Minaj.”

Daichi stares at the ceiling of the bus for a moment and says, “I’m not going to be able to stop you anyway, am I?”   
“Nope!”

“Okay.”

“Yesssss,” Noya hisses. 

So the Karasuno Crows walk into Shinzen High to the sound of “Starships” by Nicki Minaj (clean version.) Noya is sitting on Asahi’s shoulders holding the speaker high in the air. It’s embarrassing for like five seconds, then they walk past the section of the hallway where Nekoma High’s warming up and “Starships” is drowned out by “Getcha Head in the Game” from the High School Musical Soundtrack. Nekoma’s mascot is the wildcat. Their colors are red, white and black. The High School Musical jokes  _ never end _ .

Nekoma’s captain, Tetsurou Kuroo, is holding a speaker over his head and smirking. He waves at Daichi and turns up the volume. Noya retaliates by raising the volume on his own speaker.

A vision of both teams getting disqualified from the tournament before it even starts flashes before Daichi’s eyes for a second. “Asahi, can you grab that speaker and turn it off?”

“WE HAVE TO ASSERT OUR DOMINANCE, DAICHI,” Noya shouts over his friend’s protests. “WE CAN’T LET THE CATS WIN.”

On the Nekoma side, saber fencer Morisuke Yaku walks over to Kuroo, kicks him in the shin, and plucks the speaker from his hands as Kuroo doubles over in pain. “Everyone loses,” Mori declares. “Go get warmed up. I think you guys are next to Seijoh, across from the cafeteria.”

Tobio winces. Daichi doesn’t blame him-- they fenced Seijoh a few weeks earlier, and Tooru Oikawa had gone out of his way to not just beat his former clubmate, but actually injure him. He stabbed a hole through Tobio’s glove somehow. This did not count for any points, because in foil, the target area is restricted to the torso.

Noya turns on Starships again as they walk through the hallway, slightly quieter this time. Heads turn to look at them. Shouyou stuffs his pillow pet in his bag and tries his best to look intimidating, despite being 5’ 4”. It’s adorable.

Across from the cafeteria are rows of lockers, and the floor in front of them are used as places for the fencers to drop their equipment bags and stretch. The little paper sign saying “Karasuno High School” is attached to the left side of a wide space, directly across from the cafeteria doors. On their right, Seijoh’s already set up. Two of their upperclassmen, whose names Daichi can never remember, start playing All-Star by Smash Mouth in response to Noya’s theme music, before Hajime Iwaizumi shuts it down. 

Seijoh and Karasuno are two high schools in the same school district, making them Fated Eternal Rivals that are also like ten minutes apart geographically and populated by students who have friends and connections at both schools. Hajime and Daichi fence at the same club in the off-season, so they get along pretty well. “Sup, Daichi,” Hajime says. 

“Yo.”

Oikawa immediately stands up and stretches to show off his new custom lamé with “OIKAWA USA” printed on it. He has no reason to be wearing it already, the event isn’t starting for another half hour, but he’s obviously proud of the custom lamé.

“He’s going to an international tournament in Hungary in a few weeks,” Hajime explains, rolling his eyes. “So he finally needs a lamé that says “USA” on it.”

“Congrats.”

Oikawa ignores this, because he is a petty child trapped in a 17-year-old’s body.

Coach Ukai returns from the registration table and claps his hands for attention. “You have half an hour to warm up. Foils, you guys are in gym A. Saber is in gym B. Epées are in the hallways. Sorry, épées. I’ll tell you where your first bouts are when I get the info. Just warm up for now.”

So they warm up. Advances, retreats, lunges. They practice lunging at a wall holding a glove instead of a blade to work on distance. In fencing, you can’t move from side to side, only forward and back. And in New Jersey high school fencing, you can’t cross your back foot over your front foot either. 

What a lot of people don’t realize about fencing is, footwork is at least twice as important as bladework. If you can control your distance from your opponent well, you’re already most of the way to winning your bout. 

Because footwork is so important to fencing, the shoes are important too. Regular basketball or running sneakers don’t have enough support in the heel for fencing lunges. So on the Seijoh side of the warm-up space, Oikawa very casually drops a foot on top of Hajime’s fencing bag and points to his new Nike Air Ballestras.

“My mom finally bought me a pair since I qualified for the  _ international tournament _ ,” he says. The shoes are black with bright magenta accents. Lightweight, comfortable, and retailing for 200 dollars, Air Ballestras are the shoe of choice for Serious Fencers. 

“Do they have to be so...pink?” Hanamaki asks.

“Your hair is fuckin’ pink, Makki,” Matsukawa says. “But it is a good point.”

“They’re  _ magenta  _ and it’s my color, you nerds, shut up.”

“Since when is this atrocious magenta your color?” Makki asks, and Oikawa smacks him with his fencing glove.

“Rude!”

“What’s rude is you using my fucking equipment bag as a pedestal for you to pose on,” Hajime snaps, yanking the bag out from under Oikawa. “You and your douchebag 200-dollar pink fencing shoes.”

“IWA-CHAN!”

On Karasuno’s side, Shouyou and Tobio start competing over who can lunge the furthest. Shouyou can do a sort of jump-lunge that shoots him forward like ten feet, but Tobio’s taller and has longer legs. Daichi watches them for a minute or so, then goes to correct their form.

“Shouyou, you have you have your back foot planted firmly on the ground when you lunge, no matter how far you’re trying to go. Otherwise you end up putting too much weight on your ankle and can end up damaging it permanently,” Daichi says, demonstrating. They’ve gone over this before, but the tiny redhead willfully forgets it in favor of being able to lunge just a few inches further. 

Fencing is a physical sport, and tall people with long arms tend to do better initially than shorter people. Epée especially is a tall person’s weapon. In épée, the entire body is target area, and there’s no right of way, so whoever hits the other person first always gets the point. But if a short fencer has good blade control, fast reflexes, and a sense of distance, height becomes irrelevant. Nekoma’s Yaku is a good example of that, a 5’ 5” saber fencer who placed in the summer nationals the year before. 

Also, Shouyou’s left-handed which always freaks people out at first. No one knows how to fence lefties.

Daichi watches the freshmen practice lunges some more, properly this time, and joins in.

“Good morning, trash lords.” Kuroo’s voice carries across the entire warm-up area.

“Are you talking to us or Oikawa?” Suga quips, and both teams cackle. Oikawa squawks indignantly.

Kuroo’s standing in front of Karasuno’s equipment pile, in fencing knickers and red Nekoma socks, but no jacket yet. He’s wearing a Summer Nationals t-shirt from the year before, untucked despite regulations and common sense requiring otherwise. Kenma’s standing behind and slightly to the side of him, playing a video game with his uniform half-zipped up. Daichi’s known them both since his first high school fencing meet four years ago, and they’d seen a good amount of each other since then, through tournaments and meets and even a summer training camp or two. He’d like to think they were friends, though they didn’t talk much outside of fencing.

Kuroo rolls his eyes and looks away, fiddling with his bangs. Daichi steps away from the wall and walks closer to him so they can have a conversation like civilized human beings. “Because, like, crows forage in trash, you’re the crows, therefore, you’re the trash lords? Anyway. Did you get your assignments yet?” He’s talking to Daichi directly now, and Daichi feels his face get warmer under the other boy’s pointed gaze.

“Ukai’s still getting them, but we’re probably facing you in the afternoon like last year,” he says calmly.

“Yeah, that’s what our paper said.” Kenma nudges Kuroo’s elbow, and Kuroo glares at his friend before beaming widely and saying, “Well. Just wanted to wish all of you good luck this morning!”

Kenma mumbles something Daichi can’t hear, but Kuroo glares at Kenma again.

“You too, cat nerds,” Daichi says, smiling. Kuroo looks away again, and the Nekoma boys wander off.

Both Suga and Oikawa are looking at Daichi with knowing grins on their faces. Those two had always taken an unhealthy amount of interest in other people’s lives, but Daichi isn’t usually the subject of that interest, and it puts him on edge in a way he really doesn’t need right before a tournament.

“What?” he asks defensively. “We’re friends.”

“Sure,” Suga says, still smirking. “Friends.” His voice is laced with  _ implications _ , and Daichi does  _ not  _ need this right now. 

He can feel his traitorous face turning red again, so he glares at Oikawa and says, “You’re not allowed to ignore us one minute and then decide we’re friends the minute something that looks like drama starts up.”

Oikawa sticks his tongue out at him and goes back to stretching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lamé = metal vest thing foil fencers wear to verify whether or not a touch is on target. I'm gonna talk about electric fencing more in chapter 2 so bear with me  
> Bout = one round of fencing  
> Strip = the thin rectangle of floor upon which you fence. Also called a piste but not by me  
> I made hinata a lefty bc I want him to win sometimes. that's it that's the reason  
> if anything else confuses you please leave a comment so I can clear it up!


	2. nyoom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> actual fencing happens in this one!  
> hinata is adorable, daichi is a dad, I overexplain things, the usual

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't get used to me updating two days in a row I already had half of this chapter written yesterday so yeah

Eventually Coach Ukai comes back with the lists of bouts for everyone. “The way the All-Boy’s tournament works is like this: our C-strip fences the other school’s C-strip, then B fences B, and finally A fences A. We have to fence like 40 schools in one day so after the C-strip finishes his bout with one school he should go straight to the strip where his next bout will be to save time. Alternates stay close, you might get swapped in later in the day. Kiyoko will be helping the foils most of the day, Hitoka saber, and I’ll be with the épées, but we’ll also be rotating to make sure everyone gets the help and stuff they need.”

There’s a whine of megaphone feedback through the open cafeteria doors, and the director of the tournament emerges, ready to officially kick off the proceedings.

Daichi tunes out most of the speech, since it’s always the same thing every year. Blah blah, new foil mask regulations, blah blah, no gloves with holes, blah, blah. 

He’s more interested to know who he’s fencing first. From his experience, he gets into a groove and starts fencing better after lunch, so he’s hoping the morning match-ups are against people he knows. Which, after four years of competitive high school fencing, is a decent amount of people.

It’d be nice if Karasuno’s foil squad didn’t fence Seijoh until after lunch though.

The director stops talking and Oikawa calls his team into a huddle. Daichi takes a cue from their book and calls Karasuno into a huddle too.

“We got this, guys. Let’s take it one bout at a time, okay? Stay warm, don’t forget to parry, try not to break anything. KARASUNO LET’S GO!”

“YEAH!!!” Ryuu and Noya yell very loudly. Everyone else yells kind of loudly.

Seijoh’s mascot is a knight that sometimes has Oikawa’s face taped over it because the team thinks it’s funny. Oikawa finishes his team’s pep talk with their extremely annoying chant.

“What time is it?” he asks.

“KNIGHT TIME!” Seijoh yells back.

Noya sticks his hand up like he’s in class and says, “Actually, it’s 8:30 in the morning.”

Karasuno laughs.

“What time is it?” Oikawa asks again. “IT’S TIME FOR YUU NISHINOYA TO SHUT THE FUCK UP!” He high-fives Makki.

“Oh my god, we’re going to get disqualified for being too loud and disorderly before the tournament even fucking starts,” Hajime says, staring up at the ceiling. Daichi feels a rush of sympathy for his fellow épée fencer.

Everyone’s scrambling to get the rest of their uniforms on. Shouyou accidentally forgets to put his electric body cord through his sleeve, takes his jacket off again, and then puts it through the wrong sleeve because everyone around him is a righty. Tobio watches him struggle for a minute, then says, “Dumbass, hold this,” sticks one end of the cord in Shouyou’s left hand and pulls it through for him. It’s nice to see them getting along for once, Daichi thinks.

In electric fencing, a wire runs from the reel on the ground at the end of the strip up to the body cord the fencer is wearing. The wire on the fencer goes through their jacket and down the sleeve of their fencing arm, where it plugs into the socket next to their weapon’s handle. This way a machine can determine whether or not a fencer actually hit their opponent, and in foil and saber, whether or not the hit touched valid target area. Foil and saber body cords have a clip connecting to the metal lamé so the machine can distinguish between on and off-target touches. Sometimes Karasuno practices without electric equipment because it’s such a pain to set up, but it’s so much harder to referee without a machine to tell you when hits counted.

 

Tobio sticks the tail end of Shouyou’s body cord in his back pocket so he doesn’t trip over it while walking and tells him to learn to dress his own damn self before stalking off to the gym the foils are fencing in.

“These children are precious,” Suga whispers to Daichi, before speedwalking to keep up with Tobio.

 

Kiyoko taps Daichi on the shoulder with the edge of her clipboard. “You guys are in the hallway behind the cafeteria,” she says quietly, but everything Kiyoko says is quiet. “Follow me.”

Daichi grabs Shouyou by one arm and Kei by the other and drags them after her, because he doesn’t trust either of those two to not wander off because something interesting distracted him (Shouyou) or walk away because he suddenly decided this is boring (Kei). Kazuhito Narita and Tadashi, the épée alternates, go with them. 

They decided the strip order in a series of direct-elimination bouts last practice. Kazuhito lost to Shouyou, and Tadashi lost to Kei. They were all pretty much equally skilled, except for Daichi with his years of added experience, but Shouyou lost to Kei by a point and became the C-strip, or the third main fencer. Kei is B and Daichi is A.

Which means Shouyou is fencing first.

Daichi helps the redheaded boy plug his body cord into the set-up on the strip and watches him carefully. The freshman gets nervous before competitions, even throwing up on the bus at their first away meet two months ago. But he seems fine now. A little pale, maybe, but ready to go. 

They’re up against Date Tech first, a familiar team based about twenty minutes away from Karasuno. In last year’s meet, the Karasuno girls won but the boys lost by an embarrassing amount. They haven’t fenced again this year yet, but the boys in the forest green socks all seem vaguely familiar. Daichi’s definitely seen Kamasaki before, at least.

On the other side of the strip Daichi can see a tall, broad-shouldered guy with the name FUKIAGE printed on the back of his jacket. He doesn’t recognize the Date Tech kid at all, and his uniform seems pretty new, so maybe he’s a freshman like Shouyou.

“You’re fast, Shouyou, okay?” Daichi says, clipping the cord to Shouyou’s jacket. “Just stay low and keep moving. And don’t forget to parry.”

Shouyou nods frantically, and presses the tip of his sword into his foot to make sure it’s working properly. The machine lights up.

“Oh fuck, he’s a lefty,” Kamasaki says.

Daichi smiles.

The referee guides them through the checks and the three-minute timer goes on. 

Being a lefty is at least half of why Shouyou Hinata managed to make it this far. At the high school level, maybe 20% of all fencers are left-handed. So nobody knows how to fence lefties. When you’re fencing a lefty, the way your opponent stands and holds their weapon is suddenly flipped. The sword comes at you from places you do not expect a sword to come at you. Of course, most lefties also do not know how to fence other lefties, unless they’re lucky enough to practice in a place with mutiple left-handed fencers.

Fukiage freezes up at the first buzzer, leaving Shouyou free to advance at him and land a hit neatly and cleanly on top of his arm. And then he does that again. And a third time. Because if something works there’s no need to change it up, right?

But after three arm touches like that, Fukiage seems to finish buffering and parries- not in the controlled, precise way a professional parries, but with his whole arm, putting as much force into the action as he can. Shouyou’s weapon nearly flies out of his hand, and Fukiage finally hits the smaller boy’s torso. 3-1.

Ukai shows up when the score is 3-2 and Shouyou is getting passive-aggressively chewed out by the ref for hitting the floor instead of his opponent three times in the space of a minute. Daichi gives his coach a quick rundown on how it’s going. One more floor touch and Daichi is going to ask for a time out.

Ukai pinches the bridge of his nose and says, “Jesus christ, these kids. Time out!”

He walks over to Shouyou. The kid pulls his mask off and brushes his limp red hair away from his face, looking defiant. “Stop trying to get a damn toe touch, Hinata,” Ukai says. “You’re just going to keep hitting the floor. Try to go under his guard and get his elbow. Also, don’t forget to lunge sometimes. You’ve got a good lunge.”

Daichi just kind of stands next to his coach and nods because, yeah, that’s basically what he was going to say. 

Shouyou’s jump-lunge thing is one of those moves that Daichi thinks should come with a sound effect. Possibly “nyoom” or “zoom.” No one ever expects someone that short to advance once and then fucking  _ fly _ halfway across the strip before the other fencer has time to react at all. So Shouyou  _ nyooms  _ a split-second after the ref says “fence,” overshoots a little, and drops down to hit Fukiage’s knee. The touch lands. 4-2.

For the next touch, Fukiage advances first for once, but he doesn’t have time to complete an attack before Shouyou does the lunge thing again and gets him on his right arm. 5-2, and Daichi can finally relax a little bit.

He takes his mask and glove off and shakes Fukiage’s left hand, beaming. “Good bout!” 

The impressive thing about Shouyou is, everyone within earshot can hear that he genuinely means that.

“Good bout,” Fukiage murmurs, looking slightly confused.

Shouyou is trying to balance unclipping his cord from the reel with celebrating his victory, and gets tangled. Tadashi comes to the rescue and carefully disconnects the electric cord from Shouyou and hooks it up to Kei instead, who’s fencing next.

Shouyou finally unclips his sword and steps off the strip. “Daichi! Did you see that? I won!”

“You did! Nice job!” Daichi pats him on the shoulder and tries not to feel like a proud father. It fails. Noya has been calling him Dadchi for the past two years, he might as well embrace it.

Ukai checks his clipboard and points Shouyou to the strip where his next bout is, and Daichi sizes up Date Tech’s B-strip, Aone.

He remembers this kid from their last meet, a big white-haired guy built like a friggin’ tank. He’s not particularly fast or inventive, but methodical, and his size alone gives him an edge in a lot of match-ups. 

Kei looks completely unfazed, but he always looks like that. At least they’re about the same height.

Kei’s strengths lie in the fact that he started fencing a lot younger than most people, inspired by his older brother when he was an elementary school student. He also started with foil, which means his fundamental bladework skills are a lot more precise and controlled than most other épée fencers his age.

His en garde stance is deceptively casual--knees just barely bent and sword hanging far too low at his side-- but Daichi knows the moment Aone comes closer Kei will shift into whatever position he needs to be in, and get the touch. He’s a surprisingly consistent fencer, for someone who acts like he’s wandered onto the strip by accident. But then again, so is Aone.

Daichi resists the urge to cross his fingers.

When the buzzer sounds, both fencers are still, waiting for the other to attack first. They stand like that as the timer ticks away, and then Aone seems to get tired and barrels forward, advancing stiffly and sticking his arm out. Daichi realizes Aone relies on brute force more than he remembers. Kei parries lightly and gets the touch. 

Kei relies a lot more on his bladework than he should, but it’s paying off in this bout. Aone clearly isn’t used to people who feint three times in one minute and twirl their weapon around, almost taunting him. The score’s at 2-0 before he knows it.

Kei is prohibited from verbally taunting his opponents ever since he made a girl from Seijoh cry at his very first high school meet, so Daichi supposes fencing like a little shit is how he makes up for it. The kid even gets a toe touch. He’s definitely going to brag about the toe touch to Shouyou later. The bout ends 5-3, Kei. 

Kei smiles that irritatingly smug smirk of his as he shakes hands with Aone, who says nothing.

Tadashi helps his friend unhook and gushes about how amazing Tsukki is.

“Shut up, Tadashi,” Kei says, rolling his eyes, but the tips of his ears are pink.

And just like that, it’s Daichi’s turn to fence. He’s up against Kamasaki.

Daichi doesn’t remember much about Kamasaki, though he does recognize the guy’s face. He’s a bit taller than Daichi, but Daichi is too experienced to feel intimidated by a few inches’ height difference. Or so he tells himself.

The buzzer sounds and Kamasaki attacks first, hitting Daichi’s front thigh  _ hard. _ Daichi hisses in pain. That’s gonna bruise, he can tell. 

“Dude, can you maybe chill?” Daichi says, but he’s not sure if Kamasaki hears him through the mask. That kind of sets the tone for the rest of the bout. 

Kamasaki puts a lot of muscle into his hits, which he really does not need to do. Daichi’s not sure if the Date Tech boy is deliberately trying to be a dick or if it’s just kind of happening, but regardless, it fucking hurts. The score’s at 4-3, Kamasaki. God, it would be pretty embarrassing if the freshmen win their first bouts and the senior and captain does not.  _ No _ , Daichi tells himself,  _ stop thinking like that, you’re turning into Asahi and no one needs another Asahi. _

The bout resumes and Daichi, instead of going on the defensive like he usually does, advances first. Kamasaki reacts and extends his arm for an attack, but Daichi manages to parry it and get the touch, without pressing too hard, thank you very much. “La belle,” the referee says. 4-4. One touch left to determine the winner. 

They check weapons again, because that’s Protocol, and Daichi advances. He decides to take a leaf from Shouyou’s book and lunges, not as far or wide as Shouyou does, but enough to get under Kamasaki’s guard. Kamasaki reacts and they both hit each other at the same time.

“Double touch. 4-4 still,” the ref says. 

“UGH,” they both say at the same time. Daichi thinks he can see the glint of a smile under his opponent’s dark mask.

The next touch, though. The next touch is Daichi’s. He remembers to parry Kamasaki’s blade out of the way when he advances and just fucking goes for it, a clean, strong hit to Kamasaki’s torso that will probably bruise. Serves him right, Daichi thinks, a little pettily. The buzzer sounds and finally, the bout is done.

Daichi tugs off his mask and shakes Kamasaki’s ungloved hand. “Good bout,” he says. “But did you really have to hit that hard?”

Kamasaki laughs. “Sorry dude, misjudged my strength I guess. Good bout.”

Daichi turns to Ukai. “Who are we fencing next?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coming up next: foil fencing! ft suga vs. futakuchi  
> also. I made seijoh's mascot a knight bc that was my rival high school's mascot, and I really wanted to make fun of their dumb chant. I have simple tastes


	3. gold star you tried

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> suga is fuckin savage, tobio is good at fencing, that's...basically it actually. i love sugawara koushi with all my heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is kinda short but at least I update frequently right?? haha

Meanwhile, in the foil gym, Tobio is Karasuno’s A-strip fencer, Suga is B, and Hisashi Kinoshita is C. They don’t have any alternates, because the Karasuno boy’s fencing team has issues we don’t need to be getting into right now. Hisashi’s up against Koganegawa from Date Tech. 

He looks at the kid’s height, eager puppy-dog expression, and ridiculous haircut.

“What the fuck,” he says.

Then he notices the kid’s glove is on his left hand.

“What the  _ fuck _ ,” he says again, because the last time Hisashi fenced a lefty was at least a year ago and he doesn’t remember how that even works.

Hisashi looks at Suga with pleading eyes. “Suga. What do I do with this child.”

Suga shrugs. “Stay on the defensive until you figure out his quirks, but I get the feeling he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. Look how shiny and new his uniform is.”

Hisashi blinks and suddenly it’s 3-0, Not Karasuno.

“How did that even happen,” he says, because he knows he’s not an amazing fencer or anything but he’s not totally incompetent and yet this complete...embryo of a child got 3 touches on him in under a minute, which is not a very usual thing to happen.

Suga calls a time out.

“Hisashi, first of all,  _ calm the fuck down _ ,” he begins. “You froze up out there. Don’t do that. Yes, he’s tall, and yes, he’s a lefty, but that also means more target area for you to hit and you can parry his blade just as well as if he were right-handed. I was right about the newbie thing- he’s stiff and just advances at you until you’re in range and then extends.”

He puts his hands on Hisashi’s shoulders and shakes them a little. “You can control the distance by attacking first. Try it.”

The final score is 5-3, Koganegawa. Koganegawa had gotten a few off-target touches, and a few touches against right-of-way, but he still won in the end.

Suga punches Hisashi in the shoulder and it hurts a bit, but he’s been on this team long enough to be able to tell the difference between a Friendly Suga Punch and an Angry Suga Punch. “It’s just the first bout, dude! Think of it as a learning experience for next time! And boy, do we have a lot of next times ahead of us today. We’re fencing forty schools in total.”

Hisashi grins. “Thanks, Suga.”

He unhooks, confirms the scores marked down on Kiyoko’s clipboard are accurate, and goes to the next strip, muttering about lefties.

Suga’s fencing Futakuchi. He recognizes the Date Tech boy from a few past tournaments, and they lock eyes across the strip as they’re getting ready. Futakuchi smirks.

They are not friends.

“Hey, Koushi, what’s it like to have your spot taken by a freshman?” Futakuchi asks, eyes widened in a show of fake innocence. Next to him, Moniwa, their A-strip, smacks him.

“Kenji, I told you, there’s no trash-talking in fencing!”

Suga smiles at Moniwa. “We had to tell one of our freshmen that, too. It’s funny how some people choose to hide their insecurities by belittling others, isn’t it?” And beams at Futakuchi, who scowls and goes back to clipping his electric gear to the reel.

“He’s not even a freshman, is the thing,” Moniwa says miserably. “He’s been like this for  _ three years. _ He think it’s  _ charming _ .”

Suga hums thoughtfully. “The jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold trope only works if you actually have a heart of gold, though.”

Moniwa stifles a laugh. “He has the potential to be a nice person, I think. I hope.” He sobers for a second, realizing. “I’m leaving this team to him next year...”

“I can hear you, you know!” Futakuchi yells from the far end of the strip.

The ref calls for them to test their lamés against each other, and Futakuchi makes it a point to stab Suga in the stomach as hard as possible.

“Whoops,” he says, gleefully.

Suga grins. “Well,” he says. This was going to be interesting.

The buzzer sounds.

The bout goes on for a while, mainly because they both keep forgetting about right of way, get invalid hits and have to start over. Right of way in foil and saber means whoever starts the attack first has the point, so if your opponent extends his arm and then you hit him without parrying first, you don’t get the point. But it’s extremely easy to just forget to parry, when your opponent’s target area is wide open and also they’re annoying and you want to stab them.

Suga takes a few deep breaths. He is supposed to want to stab his opponents, but like, carefully, and not because they keep saying stupid shit.

He feels mildly embarrassed after the third touch on Futakuchi is dismissed by the ref as no right of way. He’s been fencing for almost five years, he should know better by now. 

The score’s 2-1, Futakuchi when Suga finally remembers Ukai’s eternal advice to “just keep moving,” and instead of starting the attack, he lets Futakuchi come to him by taking a few steps forward, then retreating. When the Date Tech boy is just slightly out of range, Suga lunges, twisting his arm so he doesn’t have to engage Futakuchi’s blade at all. Point goes to Karasuno.

Suga adjusts his mask and wonders if the same trick is likely to work again. But when the buzzer sounds, Futakuchi moves first, and he moves fast. Oh well.

They’re at 4-4 when the three-minute timer runs out. The ref sighs. “Tails, priority goes to my left, heads, priority goes to my right,” he says, and flips a coin.

Priority goes to Futakuchi. If they fence for another minute without either of them scoring, he’ll get the point and win the bout.

“Wanna just give up and let me hit you?” Futakuchi asks.

Suga raises his arm to guard position. “Sorry, no.”

The buzzer sounds.

Suga gets a hit off-target, but the next touch Futakuchi does a jump-lunge thing Suga hadn’t seen him do before. He lands the finishing touch neatly and cleanly in the center of Suga’s chest. 5-4, bout to Date Tech.

“Gold star. You tried,” Futakuchi says. He has a disgustingly smug expression on his face, and Suga’s suddenly reminded of that one time Daichi convinced him to play Call of Duty and a 12 year old in Florida beat him and then gloated about it.

They shake hands, and Suga beams as brightly as he possibly could. “Thank you, Kenji, but really, that gold star should go to your mom.” He unclips his sword from his body cord as he continues. “She tried so hard to raise a decent child and ended up with you instead.”

Moniwa, who’s helping Futakuchi unhook, makes a choking noise, and Futakuchi just stares. Suga steps off the strip and helps Tobio on the other side, though he doesn’t really need help. Seasoned tournament fencer Tobio Kageyama can clip all the electric wires and hooks and things on perfectly with one hand, blindfolded, by this point.

Kiyoko writes down the scores, and quietly tells Suga, “You did well.”

“Still lost, though,” Suga points out cheerfully. There were 39 more bouts to fence today, and he knows from experience he tends to do better as the day goes on, so he’s really okay with it.

“Barely. Do you want me to record Tobio’s bout?” Kiyoko waves her phone at him. Ukai sometimes has the managers record bouts so they can see from the side how they move and what mistakes they make. Tobio, especially, is considered a Valuable Educational Resource for all the foil fencers.

Suga shakes his head. “Save your phone battery for his bout against Oikawa. That one’s going to be... exciting.” Hopefully, Oikawa won’t literally try to kill Tobio.

Kiyoko manages a tiny smile. “I’m sure.” 

Tobio Kageyama’s lamé says KAGEYAMA USA on the back of it, not because he’s fenced in international tournaments already, but because he knows he will eventually. The metal is tinged green around his neck from sweat. His slightly yellowed jacket has patches sewn onto it instead of hastily ironed on like most people’s: his fencing club’s patch, the american flag, Karasuno’s team patch. Tobio’s general appearance is that of someone who lives in his fencing gear.

He doesn’t make eye contact with Moniwa when they’re checking lamés, just flicking his eyes up to meet the other boy’s for barely a second, then walking back to his starting line. Moniwa gets the vague impression he is barely a blip on Tobio’s radar.

On the other side of the gym, Tooru Oikawa steps off the fencing strip and cranes his neck trying to see how his former protegé is doing, while also pretending he’s just stretching.

Tobio’s bouncing on his heels lightly when the bout starts, but then waits for Moniwa to start moving to set the distance. He watches, waits for Moniwa to lower his blade just a fraction of an inch, and then lunges and gets a touch before Moniwa even has time to react.

His second touch, he twirls his blade around Moniwa’s, engaging on purpose, then hits. Moniwa’s clearly not trying to be passive, but every time he advances, Tobio retreats just enough to keep the distance in between them constant. Suga realizes Tobio’s doing that thing he does where if he’s fencing an opponent he thinks is below his level, he tries to score each point using a different tactic. 

Moniwa gets one touch when Tobio tries to do a flying lunge Shouyou-style and overshoots enough for Moniwa to extend and hit him, but Tobio comes back and gets the next touch, and the one after that.

The bout’s over in under a minute. 5-2, Karasuno.

“Good bout,” Tobio says mechanically, shaking Moniwa’s hand while looking slightly past him.

Moniwa looks a little startled, his fluffy hair limp and sweaty from the fencing mask, but he smiles and returns the handshake firmly. “Good bout,” he says, meaning it. It’s always interesting to lose to someone very talented.

Suga comes over and tries to be a helpful upperclassman, but Tobio says, “I got it, thanks.” So Suga looks over Kiyoko’s shoulder at the clipboard to see when The Battle of the Ages (or, Oikawa vs. Tobio) is happening. Two more schools until they fence Seijoh. Hopefully Tobio won’t get bored of the lowly casual fencers he’s up against before then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> up next: checkin in on the nekoma boys  
> also thanks to my internet friend who helped me think of a good comeback to the gold star you tried line


	4. what team? WILDCATS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you get...nekoma shenanigans I did not plan for in my outline!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry I wrote this before I read chapter 276 and now I think I was too hard on daishou. sorry daishou

Tetsurou Kuroo’s made a lot of bad decisions in his life, but interacting with Daichi Sawamura, ever, is probably in the top ten. 

“That was so embarrassing,” he says, after greeting the Karasuno boys. “Kenma, why didn’t you stop me from being embarrassing?”

“I’m not your keeper, Kuro,” Kenma says, putting his PSP in the back pocket of his fencing knickers. The PSP’s way too big for the pocket and Kuroo grabs it before it falls out. “You are responsible for your own embarrassments.”

“What are you, some kinda martial arts master?” Kuroo says, laughing, but then sobers. “But actually though. Why am I like this.”   
Kenma looks up at his friend and says, “If I ever figure it out I’ll let you know.” 

He kind of knows, though. Why he’s like this. Specifically in regards to Daichi Sawamura, at least. 

He’s like this because Daichi is funny and cute and a good fencing partner, and just seeing him in the hallway that morning was enough to make Kuroo’s stomach drop like he’s on top of a rollercoaster.

Kuroo pushes a hand through his disastrous hair and mutters “ _ Uuuuugh.” _

Because the worst part about this whole thing is that he’s like, 99% sure Daichi Sawamura is straight. Kuroo has a history of falling for unattainable straight boys. It checks out.

Yaku hits him on the shoulder when they get back to Nekoma’s warm-up area. “Stop moping about your crush and focus on the fucking sport.” He can always count on Yaku and Kenma to tell him exactly what he needs to hear, even if it’s not what he wants to hear.

Kuroo pulls the team into a huddle and says, “What team?”

“WILDCATS,” Taketora and Lev yell. Kenma scowls silently. He doesn’t know how to appreciate the classics.

“Getcha head in the game! Even though each bout is fenced one-on-one, we are all in this together!”

“I can’t wait until you graduate and I never have to hear this speech again.”

“Kenma, stop being a wet blanket for like five seconds.”

Kenma rolls his eyes.

Kuroo’s disappointed when their manager leads him, Noboyuki and Lev to one of the hallways the épées are fencing in and he doesn’t see anyone in Karasuno’s black-and-orange. 

(“What are you guys, Halloweentown High?” he’d said, the first time he saw them at a meet four years ago. Daichi had tilted his head to one side and said, “Didn’t I see you guys in High School Musical?”

In retrospect, that was probably where it all started. Goddamn Disney Channel Original Movies.)

They’re up against Nohebi first, which means Kuroo’s fencing Daishou first, which means Kuroo’s telling Nobu to help Lev and going to the foil gym to bother Kenma before he has to fence.

Kuroo’s been fencing Suguru Daishou in competitions and at club fencing for five years now, and in those five years Daishou’s gotten away with:

  1. Always having his foil touches count even when they went against right of way
  2. Having a floor touch counted as a toe touch when fencing épée
  3. Getting priority when a bout went overtime by just _asking the ref for it_
  4. Being a fucking dick, constantly, no matter which weapon they were fencing with.



Kuroo and Daishou can both fence épée and foil, but prefer épée. Kuroo prefers épée because, even though it seems simpler, with no right of way and the entire body as target area, it actually requires a lot more careful footwork and tactical thinking. Daishou prefers épée because he enjoys stabbing people all over.

Despite all this, Kuroo has never actually punched Daishou in the face, because he is a good fucking person. He deserves a sainthood, really.

He slides into the side door of the foil gym and spots Kenma standing with Sou and Shouhei by a strip in the back, playing on his phone.

Kenma looks up. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have a bout soon? It’s too early to give up, Kuro.”

“I told Lev to text me after he’s done fencing so I have enough time to get back. Kenma, we’re fencing  _ Nohebi _ first.”

Kenma looks despairingly at his phone screen for a second, sighs, then shoves it in his pocket and looks back to Kuroo. No one understands the gravity of the situation better than Kenma, except Kuroo himself. “Who won last time you two fenced?”

“I did, 5-3.” Kuroo doesn’t keep track of every bout and altercation he has with Daishou, that would be weird. He remembers this one because it just happened last week, and Daishou doesn’t usually go to club fencing during school fencing season so it was a weird day, so he remembers it. Yup.

“So?” Kenma blinks at him, slowly. “You can win again. Just don’t let it go overtime and you’ll be fine. You’ve been fencing Suguru for years. You know what his weak points are.”

Kenma turns back to the strip, where Sou is fencing one of Nohebi’s foils. “Go make sure Lev doesn’t break the machine by accident.”

Kuroo can very clearly picture Lev Haiba tripping over an electric reel and smashing the plastic cover to pieces. “Thank you, Kenma.”

Kenma shoos him away, and Kuroo makes it back to the épée strip as Lev is shaking hands with his opponent. The score, Nobuyuki informs him, was 5-3, Lev.

Lev Haiba’s fencing is...interesting. He’s 16, a sophomore who just wandered into fencing tryouts back in November on a whim and beat everyone by virtue of being 6’ 4” and a half and having long arms. Literally. He doesn’t know anything about distance or footwork, but he sure can stick his arm out and hit someone before they hit him. It’s very unsettling to watch people Kuroo’s lost to before, fencers a foot shorter than Lev but way more experienced, attempt to make Lev engage their blade or follow the distance they set up, and then see Lev just. Advance once and get the touch. 

No one ever expects to fence someone like Lev.

Noboyuki starts fencing Nohebi’s B-strip, some blond kid whose name Kuroo doesn’t remember. Nobu’s a solid fencer, Kuroo knows, so he’s not particularly worried about the outcome of this match-up. He stands close to the strip and watches the bout anyway, just in case.

He hears someone coming up behind him and turns around, only for Daishou to put one arm around his shoulders like they were friends or something. “Tetsurou! Long time no see,” Daishou croons.

Kuroo bends down and ducks out of the hold. “Daishou,” he says. He refuses to refer to the snake by his first name. “We literally saw each other last week.”

Daishou smirks, then glances at the ref. Their referee today is a pretty girl in a nice sweater and skinny jeans. Probably a college freshman, visiting home for the weekend and making a few bucks by refereeing bouts. She turns around and smiles at Daishou for a brief second, then goes back to judging the bout.

“I talked to her a bit before the tournament started,” Daishou said, “and she’s totally into me.”

Kuroo blinks. “Right. A hot college student. Into you. Why did Mika break up with you again?”

Daishou flushes immediately. “She said she wanted to focus on college apps, and I don’t see how that’s any of your business. Actually, why am I talking to you in the first place?”

Kuroo smiles, because finally, this unplanned and unwanted interaction is going in a direction he’s comfortable with. “I think you were trying to intimidate me. Good effort, Daishou, but you know I’m going to win regardless of how much the ref likes you.”

The pretty referee says, “5-4, bout. Fencers come forward, shake hands.” From the way the Nohebi kid is smiling, Kuroo supposes he beat Nobu. He should’ve been paying more attention, probably.

Daishou flips his middle finger up at Kuroo as he walks to the other end of the strip.

Nobuyuki smiles ruefully at Kuroo and says, “You got this, captain.” He helps Kuroo clip his electric wire onto the machine. Kuroo likes that, the ritual repetition of the action before every bout. He tests his weapon’s point against his toe, and the machine glows white.

The strip they’re fencing on is grounded, metal planks laid down to prevent floor hits from registering on the machine. Less room for Daishou to cheat.

In épée, fencers test the round metal things at the base of the blade, called bell guards, against the points of their opponent’s blades to make sure the electric circuit is working properly. It’s not supposed to go off when it presses against metal. There’s a few ways to check bell guards.

Daishou kneels and holds his blade up for Kuroo to test his weapon against Daishou’s bell guard first. He doesn’t need to kneel like that, but he’s doing it anyway, because it makes him look more proper and well-behaved for the ref. 

Kuroo jabs Daishou’s bell guard with a bit more force than necessary, and Daishou stands up and checks his blade against Kuroo’s guard before Kuroo has time to kneel. God, Kuroo hates him.

Fencing Daishou is uncomfortably comfortable. Kenma was right, he knows how Daishou fences, his strengths and weaknesses. A lot of the time, Daishou’s impulsive and starts his attacks before he’s actually close enough to reach his opponent. So Kuroo waits for Daishou to lunge, retreats half a step and hits him in the knee. The machine lights up and touch goes to Kuroo.

The next two hits are doubles, both of them hitting each other at the same time. Doubles count in épée, so the score is 3-2, Kuroo, half a minute in. Doubles are okay. Two more and Kuroo will still win.

At the next buzzer, Daishou doesn’t lunge, but makes an unusually long advance and leans forward with his upper body in a way that any coach would tell you you’re not supposed to fucking do. Kuroo reacts, jabbing Daishou in the chest, but Daishou uses the unusual angle to hit Kuroo’s back hand, right in the palm. 

You don’t wear any kind of protection on your back hand, because normal people understand you’re not supposed to hit there. It’s technically target area, yeah, but the standard fencing stance means it’s not a convenient place to hit, and if you do get hit on your back hand, it really  _ fucking hurts. _

The buzzer registers it as another double hit and Kuroo drops his weapon because, ow.

“What the fuck, dude?” he yells. He’s amazed he’s not bleeding. There’s a tiny red circle outlined in the center of his palm. It feels like this one time he slipped while climbing a tree as a kid, and got a twig stuck in his hand. Maybe not that bad, but close.

“It was an accident,” Daishou replies, smiling. “Calm down, Tetsurou.”

“You asshole,” Kuroo hisses.

The ref looks at him, mildly concerned. “Do you need medical attention?” she asks, and Kuroo shakes his head. “Okay then! Fencers ready?” They get back to their starting lines and into guard position, and Kuroo folds his left arm behind him instead of holding it up for balance like he usually does. 

It’s 4-3 now. He just needs one more point. One more touch and he can shake Daishou’s weirdly cold and clammy hand and walk the fuck away. 

Daishou shifts his grip on his blade and Kuroo remembers belatedly that Daishou fences with a French grip. A French handle goes straight up and down with a little knob on the end of it. This means you can hold the sword by the end of the handle for a few extra inches of distance, but it also means you have to waste time learning how to hold your sword properly before you start fencing. Most foil and épée fencers have pistol grip handles on their weapons, which look kind of like antlers or something but are a lot easier to hold. French grips, Kuroo has decided after years of observation, are generally used by arrogant pricks. Like Daishou.

Anyway, Daishou switches to holding his French grip weapon by the knob on the end and uses the sudden increase in length to hit Kuroo in the chest earlier than he was expecting it. 4-4. La belle. If they get another double hit after this point it will be thrown out. Kuroo isn’t quite sure who would win, at this point.

They check bell guards again, Kuroo kneeling to make Daishou test his first.

The buzzer sounds again and Kuroo starts his attack first, bouncing back and forth, feinting, getting Daishou to move to the distance and pace he sets. Kuroo feints to one side, then circles his blade around and hits Daishou on top of his arm. Daishou’s not fast enough to make it a double this time, so it’s 5-4 and Kuroo finally wins the fucking bout.

He pulls his mask off and tries to shake hands as quickly as possible.

“Good bout,” says Daishou. He’s still smiling.

“Good bout,” Kuroo says. “Did you really have to hit my hand? That’s dangerous. I know a guy who got hit in his back hand and literally bled all over the strip.” The guy was Lev, because Lev is a disaster. When the incident happened during a practice Kuroo was partly horrified at the sight of the blood on the gym floor the managers would have to clean up and partly impressed that Lev’s opponent (one of Nekoma’s girl épée fencers, a full head shorter than Lev) managed to reach that far.

“I got the touch, didn’t I?” Daishou replies.

“You got the touch, but I got the bout, so...” Kuroo unclips his body cord from the reel and steps off the strip to check the clipboard for where he’s fencing next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> up next: back to daichi and some seijoh boys


	5. kiyoko is magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> daichi and iwaizumi are bros, kiyoko makes an appearance, tsukki is a human salt shaker, etc

It quickly becomes routine. Walk to the next strip, wait, fence, confirm scores, repeat. The next few schools all blend together for Daichi- he doesn’t recognize any of their fencers or colors, or even hometowns for some places. Daichi is not convinced Morris Knolls, Morristown and Moorestown are actually all different places, and would definitely not be able to locate any of them on a map. They do okay-- generally winning more often than losing, although they do take some losses now and then. Last year they placed third from last overall, so Daichi’s main goal for Karasuno’s boy’s épée squad this year is to do better than the bottom ten. But even if they don’t, there’s still Districts to look forward to afterwards.

Eventually they’re up against Seijoh, and it’s almost a relief to be fencing someone familiar. Daichi waves at Hajime and Issei and nods at the tall freshman whose name he does not remember and probably never will. Coach Ukai gives Daichi a thumbs up and goes to check on the saber fencers, and Kiyoko walks over to take his place.

“How’s your day been so far?” Daichi asks his friend. Hajime shrugs and looks at his phone, trying not to smile at whatever’s on his screen.

“Tooru’s fencing Tobio soon so he’s spamming me with emojis.” He shows Daichi his phone screen: a wall of angry emojis sent by Trash Boy.

“Your boyfriend’s name in your phone is Trash Boy?”

Hajime reddens slightly and laughs. “He’s not my boyfriend and he is a trash boy.”

“He calls him Trashkawa sometimes,” Issei jumps in. “Do you think we could put our bouts on hold to go watch the great Kageyama-Oikawa Battle?”

Daichi rolls his eyes, though he also kind of wants to see how that’s going to go down. “Our manager promised to take a video of the whole thing.”

“Ours too, but it would be so much more fun to see it live,” Issei says. “Did you know Tooru has a habit of breaking his blade when he’s trying too hard?” He pauses. “That sounds like the setup for a dick joke, but no. Takahiro and I have been keeping a tally since freshman year of every blade he’s snapped. 8 so far, 5 in competitions. We also have a ‘Days since Oikawa broke a blade on an opponent’ counter running. 27 so far.”

Foils break more easily than épées and sabers, because they’re thinner. If you hit your opponent and cause the flexible metal sword to bend really hard at a certain angle, the last three to four inches will snap off. Daichi’s épées have snapped twice in four years. Kiyoko collects the whole team’s broken blade tips in a jar. “For future art projects,” she says, though it’s unclear what kind of art she wants to make with bits of swords.

Shouyou tugs on Daichi’s sleeve like a little kid and whisper-yells, “They’re all so TALL!” Daichi laughs a little. The Seijoh freshman scowls at Shouyou, which actually seems to intimidate the poor kid. Shouyou had won three of the five bouts he’d fenced so far, he really has nothing to worry about.

“They’re tall, but you’re fast, and you’re a lefty. Just keep moving and don’t forget to lunge.”

“That’s what you said last time, and I lost last time!” Shouyou points out. He’s practically vibrating with nervous energy.

Kiyoko comes over and says softly, “Shouyou.” The boy startles and blinks at her. Kiyoko Shimizu, former foil fencer turned super-manager, has decided that Shouyou Hinata needs Encouragement. Truly, the heavens have smiled on Shouyou today.

She flips through the charts on her clipboard for a second and adjusts her glasses. “You won three out of five bouts so far, and one of those you won 5-1. Objectively, you’re doing just fine today, and you have no reason to be worried about this next bout.”

“But...” Shouyou looks around and whispers again. “That’s the guy who hates Tobio! What if he’s as good as Tobio?”

“Nobody’s as good as Tobio,” Kiyoko said matter-of-factly. “Not in our bracket at least. And from what I heard, Yuutarou Kindaichi switched to épée after losing to Tobio in a foil tournament, 15-3. Like I said,” Kiyoko smiles a tiny bit, “You’ll be fine.”

Kiyoko Shimizu’s smile has magic calming powers, according to everybody on the Karasuno Fencing team. It works on Shouyou now. He nods, a determined frown on his face. “Thanks, Kiyoko,” he says.

So Shouyou and (Daichi casually peeks at Kiyoko’s clipboard) Kindaichi fence first. Kindaichi is not as good as Tobio, but Daichi can see a lot of Hajime’s influence in the way the kid keeps his stance low and advances carefully. Kindaichi probably won’t go for toe touches or anything weird or flashy, then, because Hajime almost never does.

Shouyou does his flying lunge thing right off the bat and gets the touch. Not how Daichi would’ve done it, but it works, so whatever. 1-0.

They reset and Kindaichi jabs Shouyou in the upper arm this time, putting a lot of force into the action. Shouyou gasps and Daichi’s over at his end of the strip in a flash. “Are you okay?”

Shouyou nods. It’s probably going to bruise, but that’s just how fencing is.

Daichi goes back to pacing up and down the length of the strip anxiously, because he needs to stay warm and watching his underclassmen fence is stressful.

The next hit’s a double, and the hit after that. 3-3.

Kindaichi lunges a bit too far, leaning forward with his upper body, and Shouyou jumps back a tiny bit and straight-up hits him in the face. Mask touches were allowed in épée, yeah, but they generally didn’t happen when there’s more convenient target area in better range, and also because it’s really unsettling to get stabbed in the face. 4-3, and the back of Kindaichi’s neck seems to be turning red.

“How long has your kid been fencing?” Daichi asks Hajime.

Hajime snorts. “‘My kid.’ I’m not his dad,” he says. Daichi gives him a look. It is an often unacknowledged truth that once you become a senior in any kind of school extracurricular activity, you automatically become the parent of all the underclassmen involved in the activity. Hajime rolls his eyes. “He switched to épée two years ago, I think, and started foil at the same time as The Great Tobio Kageyama.  He and Tooru legitimately bonded over their mutual hatred of that kid, it’s practically the definition of extra.” He thinks about it for a second. “Actually,

Shittykawa by himself is the definition of extra, Yuutarou just has some unresolved issues.”

“Shouyou started with foil too, and switched to épée after losing to Tobio... Why is this a common experience for fencers in our area?”

“Makes you wonder what fencing that kid must be like, huh?” Hajime says, and Daichi laughs.

Daichi himself started fencing in his freshman year of high school, when Suga dragged him along to the interest meeting for the school team and he just kind of...didn’t leave. And then he got really into it, signed up for lessons at the Y, a few weekend tournaments.

And now, here he is. Calling a hyperactive redheaded fourteen-year-old his son, while gossiping about fencing drama with a guy from his rival school.

The aforementioned Yuutarou and Shoyou then get a double touch, ending the bout at 5-4 to Shouyou.

“Nice,” Hajime says. “We’ll get the next one, though.” He’s grinning.

“Sure you will,” Daichi replies. Coach Ukai comes back and takes the clipboard from Kiyoko, sending her to help the foil boys.

It’s Issei against Kei. Daichi doesn’t remember if the two of them know each other, but they’ve definitely fenced each other, at the last Karasuno-Seijoh meet. He can’t remember who won that bout either. What Daichi does remember is the two of them and that pink-haired Seijoh saber kid taking turns making fun of Oikawa during his bout to see if it would make him mess up.

It didn’t, but Oikawa did yell at them afterwards, which was pretty funny for everyone watching.

“Tsukki,” Issei says.

Kei’s eyes narrow just a fraction and he snaps back, “Don’t call me that, _Mattsun._ "

“Hey now, I actually kind of like that nickname,” Issei replies, grinning. “How convenient that we’re literally about to fight right now!”

Kei squints at him. “Are you trying to rile me up? Did you, a perpetually half-asleep, probably stoned mid-rate Seijoh kid look at me and think I’m not enthusiastic enough about stabbing the shit out of you?”

And then he smiles, his very particular you-are-nothing-but-a-mere-particle-of dust-in-the-wind-and-I-will-crush-you-out-of-existence smile that makes even Daichi uncomfortable. “Because trust me, I am _plenty_ enthusiastic about this bout.”

He flips his weapon around in his hand so he’s holding it by the tip instead of the handle for no apparent reason. Issei’s calm expression does not change, slight smile frozen in place.

Kei Tsukishima and Issei Matsukawa check bells, smirk at each other, and get ready to fence.

Issei attacks first and attacks fast, but Kei manages to step back and parry in time. He retreats again, so he’s almost at the edge of the strip, and then lunges longer and lower than is standard to hit Issei’s front leg. At the same time, Issei reaches down and taps Kei’s fencing mask lightly with the tip of his sword. Double touch, 1-1.

Kei gets out of his weird lunge with some effort and makes a “tch” sound through his mask. Issei’s laugh can be heard from the sidelines.

They’re scarily well-matched, even though Issei has two years on Kei. Issei’s maybe a bit faster, but Kei understands the weapon better than almost anyone else on Karasuno’s team. He gets Issei locked into a series of clockwise and counterclockwise disengages for nearly ten seconds before lunging and getting him in the upper arm. Daichi’s done that kind of manoeuver in drills before, but it’s hard to remember fancy tricks like that in the middle of a bout. Not for Kei, evidently. 2-1.

He wasn’t always like this, though. Last year, as a freshman, Kei refused to joined the fencing team even though he fenced outside of school, because he didn’t see how it would benefit him. He came in halfway through the season, just in time for the weekend mini-tournament/big combined practice thing with the Fukurodani district schools in North Jersey. Kuroo made a point of practicing with him, giving him pointers and advice, and, even though Daichi didn’t know exactly what went down there, the next practice Kei was trying noticeably harder than ever before, and beat out Narita for a position on the starting team.

Daichi never quite got around to thanking Kuroo for that, for some reason. They’d never exchanged numbers, and though they added each other on Facebook, neither of them used it much. They only really talked during fencing competitions, and usually about the immediate present.

It occurs to Daichi that after the season ends and they all make their college decisions and scatter across the country, he might never see Kuroo again. The thought makes his heart pound in a way that he doesn’t really want to think about right now.

He makes a mental note to get Kuroo’s phone number during their lunch break.

Hajime nudges him gently. “You okay, dude? You seemed to be zoning out.” Daichi flushes.

“What’s the score now?” he asks instead.

“4-4, and then two more doubles.”

Daichi snorts. “Kei’s probably pissed, then.”

Hajime’s phone vibrates and he reads the incoming message, eyebrows scrunching down lower and lower. “Tooru’s bout is starting,” he says, his voice laced with disappointment. He glares at the strip. “Those two better finish up soon.”

“I thought you didn’t care about how Oikawa’s doing.”

“I never said that,” Hajime replies. Just then, the buzzer sounds and the bout’s over. Kei finally got a single touch, barely grazing the Seijoh fencer’s arm and getting the point of the blade trapped in a fold of the fabric. 5-4, bout to Karasuno again.

Daichi’s not going to be too smug about this. He holds his hand up for a high-five as Kei steps off the strip, and is mildly surprised when Kei actually goes for it.

Daichi and Hajime fist bump after the bell check, as they always do before they fence. Daichi likes fencing Hajime. Daichi’s a lot more defensive in his fencing style, Hajime has powerful attacks. After practicing together for so many years, they have a kind of easy rhythm. Daichi knows Hajime’s going to attack first, and he knows exactly how to defend against him.

Hajime advances on Daichi, and Daichi lets him. Hajime extends. Instead of parrying, though, Daichi shoves his blade into his friend’s torso while Hajime’s arm was still extended, making the first touch a double.

The next touch is Hajime’s, and he hits a bit too hard when he gets Daichi in the arm. “Ow,” Daichi says.

“Sorry!” Hajime yells back through the mask.

Hajime does not apologize when he uses that amount of force to parry Daichi’s blade so hard Daichi almost falls over. “Dude,” Daichi yells. He realizes Hajime’s trying to finish the bout as fast as possible to catch Oikawa’s bout against Kageyama, so he’s moving faster and pressing harder than he usually does.

It’s hard to think when you’re in the middle of the strip. Fencing bouts move a lot faster than anyone expects, shorter than the passing period in between classes at their high schools. Still, after all these years, Daichi can keep some tactical things in the back of his head, and think about them during the precious few seconds they have when they reset after every touch. Hajime’s anxious to end the bout quickly, which is affecting his fencing. So how can Daichi take advantage of that?

At 3-2, Seijoh, Coach Ukai calls a time-out and pushes Kei at Daichi. The sophomore fiddles with his glasses and looks away, evidently uncomfortable about offering advice to his captain, but Kiyoko quietly and firmly says, “Tell him.”

Kei shoves his glasses further up on his nose and mutters, “When he attacks, Iwaizumi lets his guard drop and leaves his upper arm exposed. You can do a circle-parry and get the touch when that happens.” He hesitates for a second, like he can’t decide between his natural inclination to make a cutting remark and his desire to not piss off The Captain, then says, “Don’t fuck it up.”

Daichi laughs a little and says, “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

And he doesn’t--He follows his underclassman’s advice and gets two touches in a row that way, bringing the score to 4-3, but then Hajime abruptly switches tactics. He stands still, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, and tries to goad Daichi into attacking first. When he does, Hajime hits him, too fast for Daichi to get a double. 4-4, again.

The bout is over in a flash, and it goes to Hajime. They shake hands quickly and Hajime practically sprints off the strip to watch his not-boyfriend fence. The other Seijoh épée boys had already left, so the Karasuno boys grab their stuff and run to catch up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "wow, there's a lot of things I could draw this chapter...I'm gonna draw kiyoko bc I Am Gay" - me, rereading this  
> up next: you can probably guess


	6. oikawa sit down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> suga is just really Done

Ten minutes earlier, in the foil gym, Koushi Sugawara is suffering.

His morning’s been pretty good. Tobio’s won all of his bouts, Kinoshita and Suga are both winning more than they lose, so overall they’re doing acceptably well. But now. It’s his last bout before the lunch break, Oikawa’s out for his freshman’s blood, he’s sweaty, tired, and the sleep deprivation from earlier is making itself felt. And yet, here he stands, in front of that creampuff-hair kid from Seijoh, waiting to fence while all anyone in the immediate vincity wants is for this bout to be over so the real fun stuff can begin. There’s not a whole lot of room for onlookers in the gym at all, because they have to fit a lot of fencing strips and electric setups and equipment into a fairly small space, yet there are people in normal clothes sitting in the bleachers near the strip Karasuno and Seijoh are fencing on, and a bunch of saber fencers who finished their bouts first have wandered over to see how the Great Oikawa-Kageyama Battle was going to go down this time. Suga scans the crowd through his mask, but he doesn’t see any black-and-orange socks or familiar faces.

Suga wants to check his texts and see how Daichi and Asahi are doing, but alas, he’s already on the strip. He doesn’t remember much about Creampuff Hair kid, except that they’ve fenced multiple times before and Creampuff Hair usually won.

“Kick his ass, Yahaba!” Oikawa yells from the sidelines, and Creampuff Hair flips him off. So that was his name, then.

“Do you know Kenji Futakuchi? You remind me of him a bit,” Suga says, smiling cheerfully as they check lamés.

Yahaba smiles back, equally cheerfully, and says, “I’ve heard we have similar hair, yes. He can be kind of a dick sometimes, though.”

“Sometimes, yes.”

Suga remembers now. Yahaba isn’t just Oikawa’s underclassman foil B-strip. Yahaba is Oikawa’s protegé, and he clearly takes after Tooru in more ways than just fencing. For example, his habit of slowly winding up his opponents before the bout. It is taking considerably more effort than Suga would care to admit to stay calm and polite and focused, when all he wants to do now is take his sweaty, clammy fencing jacket off and eat his fucking lunch.

He pulls his mask over his face and snaps the elastic against the back of his head a couple of times to tell himself to get it together, and the buzzer sounds.

They both advance a tiny bit, then retreat a tiny bit, attempting to bait the other person into attacking first. Suga tends to fence defensively most of the time, but to his chagrin, so does Yahaba. They let twenty seconds tick away without either of them starting an attack.

 _Maybe some of the people who came to watch Oikawa fence are going to get bored watching us and leave_ , Suga thinks, for no apparent reason.

Yahaba ends up attacking first, advancing tentatively while Suga waves his weapon ominously, waiting for Yahaba to drop his arm or extend or do _something_ so Suga can parry and riposte. (Riposte here just means to hit back.)

Yahaba lunges and Suga leaps back, lunging in return so they’re on the same level. Suga drops his arm down to get under Yahaba’s guard, but a buzzer sounds--

\--and it’s off target. Yahaba hit Suga in the arm by accident.

Yahaba swears. From the sidelines, Suga can hear Oikawa saying, “What did I tell you about watching where your point is~?” in a horrible sing-song voice.

“ _Thank you, Tooru,”_ Yahaba all but shouts through his mask. Suga doesn’t even have to look to know Oikawa’s grinning smugly.

“Hey Koushi,” Oikawa calls out, half a second after the buzzer sounds, “find me after my bout, okay?” He drags out the last word so it implies a thousand things, and Suga almost stumbles halfway through his advance. Almost.

But he’s not going to let that guy get to him, he says to himself, and advances once more and gets the touch. Suck it, Seijoh pretty boys.

The bout drags on, Yahaba rashly hitting off-target more than a few times. Yahaba hits a lot harder than he needs to and Suga has to wonder if the Seijoh boy’s got some kind of vendetta against him. It’s 4-4, la belle, yet again, and Yahaba’s pressing Suga’s arm back with his blade to hit on-target, only to have the touch called invalid because he forgot to parry.

“Maybe I should switch to épée, huh?” Yahaba quips.

“Is that a forfeit?” Suga calls back.

“Don’t you dare switch weapons, Shigeru!” Oikawa shouts from where he’s standing next to the ref. “You’re too skinny for épée anyway,” he adds a moment later.

There’s almost half a minute left on the clock, and everyone is getting impatient. The buzzer goes off again and Suga goes for the attack as quickly as he can, but Yahaba’s faster. He lunges into Suga’s attack and hits first, right in the center of the target area. 5-4, bout.

They shake hands and all three members of the Karasuno boy’s foil team cluster at Suga’s end of the strip to help connect Tobio Kageyama to the machine as fast as possible. Suga unhooks, sticks the tail of his body cord into his back pocket, and scans the crowd for people he knows again.

There’s Kenma on his phone, probably playing a video game. A Nekoma boy Suga doesn’t recognize is dragging him to a strip because Kenma forgot he still has to fence. Kiyoko’s there with her clipboard, making notes on the bout that just ended. Futakuchi and Moniwa are arguing about something by the bleachers, probably trying to decide whether or not they should stick around and watch the bout.  

Suga and Kinoshita stand by Kiyoko next to Tobio’s side of the strip and watch.

Oikawa keeps glancing around the gym nervously, probably looking for his best friend Hajime. Some of the Seijoh épée and saber boys who had finished their bouts for the day had come over already.

“Hey Tooru, if you lose, you’re treating us all to Chipotle,” Makki, a saber fencer, calls out.

Oikawa squawks indignantly and snaps back, “I’m not made of money! SAT tutoring doesn’t pay enough for 40 burrito bowls!”

“So don’t lose,” Watari says simply. And Oikawa smiles.

The reason they have this whole feud going, Oikawa and Tobio, is because Tobio beat Oikawa once.

To get a USFA ranking, you have to register for a special kind of fencing tournament and then place at a certain level, usually top 3 or top 5 depending on the number of people fencing in the tournament. The rankings start with E and go up to A. In the tournament where Tobio got his E rank two years ago, he beat Oikawa in the direct elimination round, 15-10. Oikawa got knocked out of the tournament, because that’s how direct eliminations work, and was left without any ranking at all while this random kid two years younger than him ended up placing second in the whole tournament. Oikawa took it personally and ended up switching fencing clubs to train with a coach in another town, just so he wouldn’t have to interact with Tobio again. Even though Oikawa’s a junior with a B-rank now, even though he made it to nationals two years in a row, he still hasn’t forgiven Tobio for this, because he is a petty child.

When asked about this entire situation later, Tobio Kageyama simply says, “Tooru has a terrible personality.”

In the meet against Seijoh earlier in the season, Tobio beat Oikawa again, by one point, but Oikawa had somehow managed to stab through Tobio’s glove and hurt his hand.

Now, Tobio closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths. Oikawa isn’t smiling and joking around anymore. His face is serious. If they weren’t fencing with blunt sports swords, Tobio might have felt mildly frightened.

They test their blades in silence. Tobio feels hyperaware of every little sound just then. He can hear the faint hum of the machines, the squeaking of shoes against the waxed gym floor, and the distant clanging of blades on other strips around him.

On the sidelines, Makki pulls out a piece of paper that says, “Blades Tooru Oikawa has snapped on an opposing fencer,” with a row of tally marks underneath, and waves it menacingly. Oikawa sticks his tongue out at his friend and pulls on his mask.

“Fencers ready? Fence!”

Oikawa jumps into action the second the buzzer sounds, bouncing back and forth, blade waving, trying to get Tobio to attack him. Tobio gets into a defensive stance, letting Oikawa waste his energy on manouevering. Then, when Oikawa steps in just a little bit too close, Tobio extends and advances fast, slamming his sword right into Oikawa’s sternum. Oikawa stumbles backwards and the first touch goes to Karasuno.

The second touch, Oikawa starts the attack again. Tobio starts the attack and Oikawa hits back without parrying first. The machine lights up on Oikawa’s side but the ref rules it as against right of way, so it’s still 1-0 Karasuno.

The Seijoh boy changes tactics then and waits for Tobio to attack first. Tobio advances at Oikawa while Oikawa retreats, keeping the distance between them constant until Tobio suddenly lunges and hits him in the chest. 2-0.

“Chipotle for everyone, don’t forget!” Makki yells. “With chips and guac!”

“Shut up!” Oikawa bends his thin blade back and forth in his hands to make sure it’s straight.

Somehow that works and Oikawa manages to get the next two touches. He hits too hard, though. Tobio’s sure he’s going to be covered in bruises after the bout.

“You don’t have to press that hard,” he says helpfully.

So when the buzzer goes off again, Oikawa does a jump-lunge thing at his opponent right off the bat and straight up slams his blade into Tobio, pressing in a way that---

\-- _SNAP_ \--

“FUCK!”

\---breaks the blade.

The Seijoh peanut gallery claps appreciatively, and Yahaba hands Oikawa his spare blade. Makki makes a show of adding a tally to his chart.

They run through the tests again when Hajime, Mattsun and Karasuno’s épée squad show up.

“He broke another blade,” Makki informs his friends, gleefully. Oikawa pushes his mask off to show his team exactly what he thinks of their disrespect with a carefully-crafted expression of disgust.

Hajime pinches the bridge of his nose and asks the ref for a time out. “Trashykawa, the fuck did I tell you not to do today?”

Oikawa slumps. “Break my blade....”

“And what did you do?”

Oikawa slumps slightly further. “....Break my blade......”

“You idiot.”

Oikawa opens his mouth like he’s about to say something to that, then closes it and looks away, flushed and sweaty face getting a tiny bit redder.

“Just calm the fuck down, moron,” Hajime says, and punches him gently in the shoulder. Oikawa punches him back and pulls his mask back on.

The bout resumes.

Oikawa seems to have gotten his shit together, and successfully parries Tobio’s next hit. He gets the next two touches, bringing the score to a tie.

Then Tobio gets in close and extends. Oikawa twists sideways to get his torso out of the way of the blade, and Tobio’s foil ends up hitting Oikawa’s back hand and sliding down his palm.

The ref calls “Halt!” and both fencers drop their weapons, Oikawa swearing and rubbing his hand.

“Oikawa, are you okay?” Tobio asks, but the Seijoh boy ignores him. Seijoh’s manager grabs a first-aid kit and checks Oikawa’s hand for a cut, but the hit didn’t leave any marks. Hajime stands close by, trying not to look worried.

“It’s fine, nothing broken or cut this time!” Oikawa says with a laugh, waving the manager’s concern off.

“This time,” Hajime mutters darkly.

Meanwhile, Shouyou runs over to Tobio’s side of the strip and asks, “Was that revenge for the time that guy tore your glove?”

“Good question, shrimpy. Did you do that on purpose?” Oikawa glares up at Tobio from under his flippy bangs.

Tobio looks confused. “What? No. That’s mean!”

“You’re mean!” Shouyou points out, and Tobio swipes at him with the hand not currently holding a sword. “I was kind of kidding but that just proves my point!”

“I’m not trying to be mean,” Tobio protests, and Shouyou laughs and says, “I know. You’re just intense about stuff. It’s scary sometimes, but sometimes it’s good. Like now!”

They lock eyes for a second, and Tobio can feel his face grow hot for some inexplicable reason. “Thanks,” he says gruffly, and turns back to the strip.

Oikawa rolls his eyes. “Whatever.” And then, to the ref: “I’m ready to resume fencing now.”

The incident seems to have shaken them both a bit, because both of their next touches are off-target. The score is still 2-2. Tobio starts the next attack, moving cautiously as if coaxing a wild animal out of the woods. Oikawa doesn’t let him finish the action, though, jumping forward and driving a hit into the younger boy’s side that, were the blade sharpened, might have been fatal. 3-2.

The way foil and épée fencing both work is in bursts: long-ish periods of bouncing back and forth and waving swords around, then a few brief seconds of hitting each other’s swords/target areas until someone gets a point. The more skilled the fencers are, the more time they spend bouncing around, playing the distance game, and the faster the bladework happens. Distance is important in fencing. You can only hit someone when they’re in range, after all.

The next few hits happen in a matter of seconds. Oikawa accidentally hits Tobio’s mask, which is off-target. Tobio accidentally hits Oikawa’s thigh, which is also off-target. Again. Oikawa shoots a despairing look at Hajime, who rolls his eyes.

On the next touch, Tobio starts to extend his arm when Oikawa straight-up elbows him out of the way, not even parrying just smacking his arm with his elbow as he gets into range of the target area, and it’s suddenly 4-2, Oikawa. It looks like he might win this time.

Oikawa and Tobio both start advancing the moment the buzzer sounds again, but the ref rules Oikawa’s hit as against right-of-way. He slows down a bit, is more careful where he aims, because he only needs one more touch to win and Tobio needs three.

Tobio bends his blade back and forth a bit as they reset, and then...he gets it together.

Suga can’t tell exactly what the two fencers on the strip are doing, it’s moving too quickly for him to follow, but he can see that Tobio’s started to anticipate Oikawa’s tactics before he tries them, and is more comfortable with infighting- maneouvering the blade within a very close range. Tobio’s holding his sword almost straight up as he gets into Oikawa’s space and lands a touch at the electrified edge of his mask. 4-3.

Suga checks the time on his phone and sighs quietly. There’s a minute and a half of fencing time left in the bout, but adding in all the non-fencing bits means they’ve been going at it for nearly ten minutes now. He just wants to eat lunch, dammit. He’s already taken off his lamé and jacket and folded them over one arm as he waits for this Battle of The Ages (TM) to be over.

Tobio’s next touch is practically textbook with how simple and quick it is. Advance, extend, lunge. Half a second of movement and he strikes right between his opponent’s ribs. La belle.

You can almost hear everyone around the strip tense up.

They check lamés again.

The thing about fencing is, when it’s fast, it’s really fast. Double touches in épée for instance only count if you get them in within forty milliseconds of each other. So it is in milliseconds, in fractions of a second, that Tobio Kageyama and Tooru Oikawa clash for the last time on that strip.

Clang-clang, _beeeeeeep._

“Halt. Attack, parry, no riposte, remise, touch goes to my left.”  
The Seijoh boys cheer.

The two of them take off their masks and come forward to shake hands. Oikawa is grinning.

“Not so stoic now, are you, Tobio-chan?” he sing-songs.

Tobio just looks at him and says, “Thank you for the bout,” in a firm, steady voice.

They sign the scoring sheet and get their stuff, ready to break for lunch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter's probably gonna end up a bit longer than the rest of these so it'll take more time, probably, hopefully it's worth it tho


	7. sord.....

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> finally some kurodai content in this kurodai fic

Suga flops down on the ground next to his fencing bag with a relieved sigh. Finally, finally, finally, he doesn’t have to fence. He had packed two lunches the night before, one for himself and one for Daichi, and they were practically works of art as far as homemade lunches go. He gives Daichi one of the brown paper bags and winks at him as Daichi wanders off to eat lunch...elsewhere. Suga can guess where, and he’s totally going to tease Daichi about it later.

“You made Daichi lunch? That’s so domestic,” Noya says, wagging his eyebrows. He and most of the rest of the team bought sandwiches from Shinzen’s cafeteria instead of bringing food.

Suga laughs. “We have an agreement: he drives me places and I feed him. Hashtag, bffsies for life.”

“You mean you’re not an old married couple?” Ryuu asks, sitting down in between Suga and Noya. And Suga laughs again and shakes his head.

“Maybe we’ll get platonically friend-married for tax purposes someday. But dating? Naaah.” He looks off into the distance. “He knows too much.”

The school halls are ventilated, but not enough to completely dispel the odor of hundreds of sweaty teenage male athletes. Good thing they’ve all gotten used to it, though. Hitoka and Kiyoko walk around Karasuno’s space handing out bottles of gatorade, bananas and tangerines. Suga’s just content to not move for a while, and eat his awesome lunch.

Oikawa comes over holding a gatorade bottle and stops in front of where Suga’s sitting on the floor and leans over him in an attempt to be intimidating. Unfortunately for him, Oikawa stopped being intimidating to Suga long ago.

“Don’t do that,” Suga says wearily. “I’m not getting up so if you want to talk to me you need to sit your ass down.”

Noya, Ryuu and Asahi, who’s sitting on Noya’s other side, all turn to look at Suga. Oikawa looks at them, then back to Suga, then jerks his head in the saber boys’ direction meaningfully.

Suga stares at the ceiling and sighs. “Can you guys go bother your Nekoma friends for a bit?”

“But we’re comfortable here,” Noya whines.

Suga looks at him for a moment and raises a single eyebrow. Noya jumps to his feet and drags both Ryuu and Asahi up with him. “Let’s go bother our Nekoma friends!”

Asahi makes a quiet noise of protest, but is as always overruled by his louder and shorter friend. They wander off to presumably look for trouble, and Oikawa sits down in the now-empty space beside Suga.

“So,” Oikawa says, leaning in close. Suga shoves him off, but Oikawa continues, unfazed. “Remember frosh-soph?”

Frosh-soph is an invitational tournament for freshmen and sophomore high school fencers that happened a few weeks ago. There’s a round-robin where everyone in the grade and weapon fences each other and then a direct elimination round, and the top four in each bracket get medals. Upperclassmen volunteer to referee bouts, because if they do well enough to get picked to ref the final bouts for their weapon they’ll make 200 bucks. So, Suga and Daichi and Asahi all went, hoping to make some cash on their day off. And so did Oikawa and some of the other Seijoh boys. (Tobio skipped it because he was fencing in another, cooler tournament in D.C.)

This is not, however, what Oikawa is referring to when he asks if Suga remembers frosh-soph, because during the break in between the round-robin and direct elimination, Oikawa cornered Suga in the bathroom and. Well. Things happened. Things of the... more explicit-rating variety.

Suga daintily sips his gatorade and says, “No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“You were really mean to Tobio, so I am not going to do anything with you,” Suga says, in calm and measured tones. He has to set a good example for his underclassmen, and that includes not making out with the fencers from other schools that literally want to murder said underclassmen.

“You didn’t care about that last time,” Oikawa points out.

“Last time, you’d lost.”

The saber boys Suga had kicked out earlier are on their way back to their spot when they hear a voice that is unmistakably Tooru Oikawa’s shout, “Am I _that bad_ at sucking dick?”

Ryuu and Noya look at each other and start walking faster. They turn the corner just in time to see Suga, red in the face, whisper-shout “Holy shit, keep it down! And that is entirely beside the point, Tooru!”

Suga looks up into two identically smug grinning faces. “What did we miss?” Ryuu asks.

Suga opens his mouth. Closes his mouth. “I have to go. Tooru, still no.”

He runs into Morisuke Yaku from Nekoma by the water fountain. “Sup,” Mori says. “How was your morning?”

Suga shrugs and makes an “eh” gesture with his hand. “Have you heard about the latest Oikawa drama?”

Mori makes a face. “I try to stay out of that whole...mess.” He finishes filling up his water bottle and turns to leave.

Suga nods. “Wise choice.” They start walking back to Nekoma’s warm-up area. “Morisuke, will you judge me for my bad life choices?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then, I won’t tell you about them.”

“Okay. Are you done?” Yaku drops his water bottle into his open fencing bag. Suga regards it for a moment.

“One question: can you fit in this fencing bag?” Some of the other Nekoma boys turn to look at them for that, including Lev.

Mori gives Suga a Look. “I will deck you.” Suga chooses to interpret that as “Stop giving them stupid ideas.”

“Gotcha. Talk to you later, Mori!”

Shouyou is sitting with Hitoka and Tobio by some lockers near Karasuno’s designated space.

“Hey, Shouyou, can you fit in a fencing bag?”

Shouyou jumps up. “WATCH ME,” he declares.

The three freshmen take everything out of Shouyou’s fencing bag and dump it in a pile on the floor. Shouyou climbs in. He fits. It’s adorable.

“Perfect, beautiful, amazing,” Suga says, snapping photos. Shouyou Hinata is the unofficial Karasuno Boy’s Fencing mascot, and too precious for words.

 

On the other side of the space, Oikawa is sulking. He’s eating a prepackaged milkbread from the H-Mart up in Edison and rolling his foil around on the floor with his foot, looking gloomier than ever.

Hajime pokes him. “What’re you so grumpy about, Trashykawa? You won, didn’t you? You beat Tobio and isn’t that the only thing you ever wanted to accomplish?”

“Not true, I also want to get 5s on all my AP Exams,” he responds, still sulking. Hajime snorts.

“It’s too early to sulk about AP Exams, you overachieving little shit. What’s actually the problem?”

Oikawa looks away and says, “You wouldn’t get it.”

That is when Mattsun chooses to yell, helpfully, “He wants the D.” He and Makki exchange high-fives.

Oikawa crumples up his milkbread wrapper and chucks it at Matsukawa’s head, who ducks.

Hajime blinks. “But you’re a B-rank already?”

Mattsun and Makki fall over each other laughing, while Oikawa stares at the tiles on the floor with his head between his hands and tries his best not to scream at this entire exchange.

Yeah, his lifelong crush on Hajime Iwaizumi is a secret to absolutely nobody, except Hajime himself.

His phone vibrates, and he’s surprised to see a new message from Koushi Sugawara on his screen.

 

Koushi: u just want 2 make ur iwa-chan jealous don’t you?

Koushi: but imo, from what ive seen

Koushi: you don’t rly need to bother

Koushi: so stop fucking around and tell him, tooru~

 

He thinks back to the bus ride after Frosh-soph, to taking off his scarf to reveal the small round bruises on the back of his neck, and Iwa-chan’s response being “How did someone manage to hit you there?” Because hickeys look like fencing bruises, as it turns out. The looks he got from Makki and Mattsun didn’t help either.

 

Oikawa looks across the ocean of fencing bags and faces and makes eye contact with Suga, who’s leaning against a locker with his phone in one hand. Suga grins and winks, copying a signature Oikawa move.

Oikawa glares at him a little. Suga’s grin widens slightly, and Oikawa sighs.

 

Meanwhile, Kuroo, Kenma, and their friends from Fukurodani Academy, Koutarou Bokuto and Keiji Akaashi, have comandeered a table by the window in the cafeteria to eat their lunches. The light from the window seems excessively bright, reflecting off the frost and snow in Shinzen’s courtyard, and the atmosphere feels almost cheerful because of it. Shinzen’s cafeteria is bigger than Nekoma’s, but they have the exact same kind of round gray tables and gray tile floor pattern so it feels like an alternate universe version of their school. Kuroo is telling the Fukurodani boys about his embarrassing morning.

“Suga and Oikawa totally figured it out, they were smirking at me. Why are all the foil boys mind readers?” he directs this last comment to Kenma and Keiji, both foil fencers with occasionally uncanny insight.

“I’m not a mind reader, I’ve just known you since kindergarten. It wasn’t that bad,” Kenma interjects, tone of voice betraying absolutely no emotion about the situation. “You’re overreacting like usual.”

“Kenma’s a good judge of things like these when they don’t directly involve him,” Keiji points out. “So if he says it wasn’t that embarrassing, it probably wasn’t.”

“You can trust Kenma!” Koutarou declares, and reaches across the table to ruffle Kenma’s hair. Kenma glares at him, but does not actually protest this treatment, probably because complaining would take effort.

“Anyway,” Kuroo says, taking a sip of his apple juice, “did I tell you guys I got a new sword? It’s a pink, purple, blue gradient. I’m calling it: the Bi Sword.”

“You name your swords?” Keiji responds, wrinkling his nose. Kuroo instantly feels deeply and personally judged, like he always feels when Keiji Akaashi expresses mild disapproval about him. He has that kind of face.

Kenma nods and rolls his eyes. “Always has. We showed up at the fencing supply store the weekend before our first foil lesson way back in like, sixth grade, and when they put together Kuroo’s practice foil he stroked it like it was his pet or something and named it Excalibur. Nerd.”

“You can’t just _tell_ people that story, oh my god.” Kuroo slowly slumps down until his head is on the table.

“Childhood best friend perks,” Kenma snaps back, a tiny smile on his lips. Kuroo opens one eye to give him a betrayed glare.

“So back to the bi sword,” Koutarou cuts in. “Did you do that so you could hit on people while you hit them?”

Kuroo puts his head back down on the table. “...Maybe. Don’t think it’s gonna work with Daichi though, he is tragically heterosexual.” Eventually they’ll graduate and go to different colleges in probably different states and Kuroo’ll be forced to just get over it.

The other three boys at the table reply, in perfect sync, “No, he’s not.”

He lets out a bitter laugh. “Does he know that?”

Koutarou grabs him by his shoulders and shakes him a little. “This is why you need to go on Facebook more often, bro! He had a rainbow filter on his profile picture last June! You know what that means!”

Kuroo is not going to get his hopes up. “Maybe he was just being a supportive ally?”

“Oh my god, let me find the post.” Koutarou pushes his friend aside and starts scrolling through Daichi’s facebook profile, grumbling about Shinzen’s crappy wifi.

“Hey guys,” a voice says behind Kuroo, and, wow, speak of the devil. It’s Daichi and Shouyou from Karasuno. Shouyou jumps to hug Kenma, who was not expecting that and was not prepared. Daichi just kind of stands next to the table, and Kuroo almost shoves Kenma off the bench as he slides over to make room.

He also notices that Daichi is out of his fencing whites and is wearing his long fencing socks, old math club t-shirt and...short shorts. Of course he’s wearing short shorts, what else would you wear under fencing knickers? But most people, including Kuroo, don’t take their knickers off for the hour-long lunch break, because it’s easier not to. Kuroo’s mouth goes dry as he tries really hard not to stare.

Daichi sits down next to him and Kuroo is torn between moving as far away as possible and spontaneously combusting from feeling Daichi’s arm against his. He compromises by freezing in place. The look Keiji sends him is deeply sympathetic.

“Hey! Crow boys! How are you? How were your mornings? I heard about Oikawa winning. He put it on his snapchat story,” Kuroo says, calmly, remembering half a second that Oikawa is not on Karasuno’s team and he probably should have phrased that differently but oh well.

“He would,” Daichi says. “We’re doing okay, I guess. Win some, lose some. You know how it goes.”

“Shouyou!” Koutarou exclaims, waving excitedly at the redheaded boy. They’d bonded at the quad meet Karasuno had against Fukurodani, Nekoma and Shinzen way back at the beginning of the season, because they’re both left-handed and have worryingly similar personality types. Also, Koutarou fences saber, which automatically makes him super cool in Shouyou’s book.

“Shouyou did I show you my rainbow saber? I have a rainbow saber! It’s cooler than your bi sword, Tetsu. Sorry, I don’t make the rules,” Koutarou says, pulling the saber out of his fencing bag, which was under the table. He really didn’t have to bring his bag to lunch with him, but he’d wanted to be prepared for every eventuality, including showing off his new rainbow saber to any friends from other schools who might show up.

“THAT’S SO COOL!” Shouyou yells.

“I KNOW!”

“Can I hold it?!”

“Sure!”

Shouyou takes the weapon carefully, turning the saber around in his hands to see it catch the light. The rainbow pattern looks like sunlight on an oil spill, not really a true rainbow, but it’s pretty nonetheless.

“Bi sword, huh?” Daichi asks.

Kuroo coughs awkwardly. “Hah. Yes. Because it’s like. The colors of the bi pride flag. Which. I am. So.” He makes a pleading expression at Kenma, who rolls his eyes.

“He names all his swords,” Kenma says. “His practice foil is called Excalibur and his practice épée is--”

Kuroo puts a hand over his friend’s mouth and hisses _“Thank you, Kenma.”_ Before Kenma could say anything else. But Daichi is smiling at this exchange and, oh no.

“Wait, I want to know. What did you name your practice épée, Tetsurou?”

Kuroo shivers at the sound of his name on Daichi’s lips and mutters, “Sord with no ‘w’ and an ellipsis. Like. You know Homestuck? Like the thing from Homestuck. It was 8th grade, let me live.” His face probably looks like a tomato right now, this is horrible.

“Huh. So you were one of _those_ kids,” Daichi says.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

But the other just smiles at him and says, “It’s nice to see you’re not nearly as cool as you pretend to be.”

Kuroo’s like, eighty percent sure he is going to die, right here, right now. Just expire on the spot. This is too much. And none of his bullshit friends are helping. Kenma’s talking to Shouyou about a video game, for instance.

“So did you start with foil and then switch to épée, or...” Daichi’s asking him, and Kuroo snaps to attention.

“Sort of! I dragged Kenma into starting foil with me, and then after a few years our coach suggested I switch, so I did, and then Kenma learned épée too because I wanted to practice with him, and then by the time we got to high school we were both competent at two weapons. I’m actually an E-rank in both foil and épée now, though I like épée more. Kenma doesn’t do tournaments if I don’t make him so he’s unranked.”

“That’s really cool,” Daichi says, and he looks likes he genuinely means it. Kuroo feels warm all over. “Suga and I started fencing at around the same time too, but we did different weapons from the start so we didn’t really do fencing things together until high school.”

“Makes sense,” Kuroo says. “So, you and Suga are...”

“Friends,” Daichi says very firmly. “Best friends who have been friends for a very long time and know too much about each other. There was a rumor going around school that we were dating for a while, but, no.”

Kuroo tries not to look too happy about this discovery, fails miserably, and scans the table for literally anything else to occupy his attention. Too bad he’d already thrown out his empty juice container. Daichi didn’t say he was gay, but he didn’t say he was straight either, so Kuroo allows himself to get his hopes up maybe a little bit.

“Are you done with all your college app stuff yet?” Daichi asks.

There. Finally. Something unembarrassing and unemotional to talk about. Kuroo relaxes a fraction. “Mostly, still have to interview for Carnegie Mellon and UChicago. They’re not my top choices, though. I kind of want to stay close to home.” Partly because he doesn’t want to find out how long Kenma’s going to try and function without sleep or food if Kuroo’s not there to stop him.

“I got recruited by UCSD,” Koutarou jumps in. “Which would be cool! Or hot, because California’s really hot.”

“But then you’ll be across the country from everyone you know and love,” Keiji points out, something sharp breaking through his usually calm tone. And Koutarou’s smile fades a little bit as he waves it off, saying nothing’s official yet, that he’s keeping his options open, that NYU was also talking to him and that’s just a few stops on the train away from home, right? Keiji’s expression gets less and less amused.

So much for unembarrassing and unemotional conversation topics.

“That reminds me,” Daichi says, pulling out his phone. “Do you want to exchange phone numbers? So we don’t completely lose touch even if we do end up across the country from each other, you know? I guess there’s Facebook, but I don’t really use it much, so.”

In the back of Kuroo’s mind, a choir of angels is singing triumphantly. “Yeah dude,” he says casually, opens up the add contact tab and slides his phone over.

He puts his name in Daichi’s phone as Troy Bolton, looks at it for a second, and then changes it to Captain Cat Man. But that doesn’t look right either.

“Daichi, what should my name be in your phone?” He demands.

“Uh, your name? What else would it be?” Daichi blinks at him.

“I’m in Bo’s phone as TetsuBRO KuBRO, because we are the eternal bros, it’s us. And I’m in Kenma’s phone as Mess (TM) because Kenma’s put up with a lot these past few years.” He considers it. “I think Yaku put me in as Mess (TM) too actually. I swear I’m a fully functioning human adult.”

Daichi laughs and says, “Just put it in as your name with a cat emoji next to it, that’s good enough for now.” He doesn’t agree or disagree with the assessment of Kuroo as a Mess.

And Kuroo doesn’t know what possesses him to do it, but he grabs Daichi by the shoulders, spins him around and says, “Contact picture.” Then snaps a selfie of the two of them, grinning at the camera. Is it wishful thinking, or is Daichi actually blushing a little? Kuroo desperately hopes so.

“And for my first text, I’m sending myself this photo. We look adorable.”

Daichi snorts and flushes even more.

Kuroo takes a quick peek at Daichi’s contact list and everyone else in there is literally just saved as their names, or in some cases, First Name Reason Daichi Even Has Their Number. Hitoka is saved as Hitoka Fencing Manager, poor girl.

They switch phones again and while Daichi gets the contact info from everyone else at the table, Kuroo makes the selfie his contact picture for Daichi. He also changes the name from Daichi Sawamura to “Thighchi Sawamura,” and hopes nobody plans on going through his contacts anytime soon.

Lunch break is supposed to be an hour long, but it ends up stretching longer as always while the results of the morning’s match-ups are calculated and sorted to figure out the match-ups for the afternoon. After around a half hour of sitting and catching up, Daichi bids his friends goodbye and goes to round up the Karasuno boy’s épée squad for a bit of warm-ups and practice. Tadashi especially needs more practice, because he’s getting switched in for Hinata at least twice during the afternoon bouts.

He drags Shouyou back to Karasuno’s pile of equipment only to have Suga pounce on him with, “Where were you and who were you hanging out with?”

Daichi blinks. Suga has that look on his face, the “I am bored and crave entertainment through gossip” expression Daichi is only too familiar with after years of friendship.“What are you, my mother?”

“Ah, Daichi, it seems like I am everyone’s mother today,” Suga replies, sighing loudly but providing no context to this statement. “Anyway, tell me.”

“Just Kuroo, Kenma...Koutarou and Keiji. Finally got their phone numbers. Kuroo saved his number with a kaomoji after his name, what a dork. Did you know he names his weapons? And had a Homestuck phase? He acts like he’s so cool, but that’s not even a little bit true,” Daichi says, stepping over Suga to get to his fencing bag. Suga just blinks at him. Then he grins.

“What?” Daichi asks.

“Nothing, nothing,” Suga says, still smiling. And then a little quieter: “But isn’t this an interesting development.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Suga just continues to smile, and Daichi kind of regrets his choice in best friends a little. It wasn’t really a choice, he supposes, more like a gradual drifting together from being on the same bus for years on end and in the same classes and then joining the fencing team together, but now they have way too much blackmail info on each other to ever drift apart completely. And, okay, Suga’s actually really great when he’s not doing his cryptic psychic thing. Daichi still remembers that one day on the late bus home after practice in their first year, when he blurted out “I think I’m gay” and Suga was like “Oh, cool, me too!” and then they both laughed out of sheer relief. Dating Suga would be like dating a sibling, but he’s a pretty great best friend to have, Daichi thinks. 

“Anyway,” Daichi says. “Have you seen my kids?” It’s hit that point in the season where Daichi has accepted his role as “Fencing Dad.” Ennoshita even got him a mug for Team Secret Santa that said “#1 DAD” on it. Might as well embrace it.

“Which ones are you referring to, Dadchi?”

He rolls his eyes a bit at the nickname and says “The épée ones. I want to get in some practice fencing before the afternoon seeds come out.”

“Good idea! I should probably do that, too,” Suga says. “I think Kei and Tadashi went to the foil gym for some reason? Go check there.”

Narita’s sitting behind a pile of gear on his phone, looking pretty bored, so Daichi grabs him too and they go off to search for the wayward sophomores. Shouyou literally runs into Tadashi as he and his friend are leaving the gymnasium, talking quietly about something.

“Sorry!”

“It’s fine, Shouyou,” Tadashi says, despite Kei glaring daggers at the tiny redhead. “What’s up?”

“Practice!” Daichi says, in a tone that leaves no room for argument.

They get their stuff and find an empty hallway too narrow to set up strips in and do distance drills, which are pretty simple. You hold your glove instead of an actual weapon and just go back and forth with your opponent and try to take the glove out of their hand, or tap them on the shoulder with your glove, or something like that. They’re called distance drills because they teach you how to move quickly and judge the distance between yourself and your opponent.

They could also fence dry, without the electric weapons being plugged in, but the distance practice accomplishes most of what practice fencing requires without the need to put on the heavy jackets and masks.

(Daichi will never understand why not-electric fencing is called dry fencing. It’s not like electric fencing is wet.)

He puts Shouyou against Tadashi and Kei against Narita and watches them for a few minutes.

Shouyou is...not very good at distance drills. He’s good at moving fast, of course, but maybe it’s the lefty thing or the height thing something because he keeps landing too close or just far enough away for his taller opponents to get the touch before he does.

Daichi watches as Tadashi gets touch after touch on Shouyou with his glove and wonders how Shouyou managed to beat him in direct eliminations a few days ago.

Coach Ukai comes up behind him while Daichi’s puzzling over this and says, “Have you thought about going faster?”

“What.” That was not what Daichi was going to suggest.

Shouyou stops and blinks at Ukai confusedly. “But I’m already pretty fast?”

“You are, but you don’t change direction much, and you’re not fast enough for it to be unpredictable. Try going back and forth a little more, like this.” He demonstrates. It looks a little silly.

“Like dancing,” Shouyou says.

“Sure, if you want to think of it that way.”

“Okay,” Shouyou says, furrowing his eyebrows. And shockingly enough, it works.

Coach Ukai pats the kid on the back a few times and says, “Now you have a new strategy for the afternoon. Speaking of which, I got the strip order for the afternoon bouts, which is why I came over here. You’re up against Shiratorizawa in fifteen.”

Daichi takes the paper from Ukai and looks it over. They’re fencing Nekoma last, which could either be good or bad. His phone vibrates in his back pocket. It’s a text from Kuroo.

 

Tetsurou Kuroo (=`ω´=): good luck this afternoon!

Daichi smiles in spite of himself, and changes the cat kaomoji to one that he thinks looks slightly more like Kuroo.

Daichi Sawamura: you too!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the rainbow sword bit was actually the first thing I came up with for this au lol


	8. top 10 anime deaths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “All according to keikaku,” says Satori, and the alternate who was cringing earlier smacks him.  
> “I apologize for him,” Reon, Shiratorizawa’s A-strip, adds. “He’s always like this, but we’re used to it.”  
> “I know I said no trash-talking,” Daichi whispers to Kei, “but...shut him up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this... got away from me a bit

Shiratorizawa’s a prep school about twenty minutes away from Karasuno, known for being very prestigious and very expensive. A kid from Daichi’s eighth grade science class ended up going there, and Oikawa got accepted but refused to attend for some reason (Suga says it was because Hajime didn’t make it in, but Oikawa says it was just too much money.) They have a saber fencer, Ushijima, who’s on the US National team and constantly flying all over the world to fence in tournaments. Their épée guys were pretty okay as far as Daichi remembers. He knows Karasuno won overall at their last meet, but he doesn’t remember how they did at épée specifically.

“Well, well, well, well, well,” says the one with bright red spiked hair, sneering and leaning over Shouyou in a way that made Daichi want to get between them to protect the freshman. Ugh, this guy.

“Satori. Hello,” Daichi says, smoothly pushing Shouyou back a few steps and making eye contact with Satori Tendou. He remembers this guy. He does not like this guy very much. It was very satisfying to win against him last year. As far as he knows, this time Satori’s up against Kei, which should be a fun time.

“Who are these adorable little newbies?” Satori asks, still looming because he’s five inches taller than Daichi and needs to rub it in his face. Blagh.

“None of your business,” Daichi snaps, then steers Shouyou to his end of the strip and helps set him up.

Kei is watching this whole thing with raised eyebrows, head tilted thoughtfully to one side. 

“You’re fencing Satori,” Daichi tells him, and Kei smirks.

The kid on Shiratorizawa’s side is a sophomore with a bowl cut, jumping up and down in excitement for some odd reason. He’s a lefty too, and Daichi cringes internally because Shouyou doesn’t have a whole lot of experience fencing other lefties. This might not end well.

The freshman turns to Daichi with wide eyes and says, “Daichi he’s a lefty!”

“Yes, yes he is. But it’s not a big deal. Just keep moving the way Ukai showed you. You’ve seen how righties fence each other, yeah? It’s just like that but flipped. You probably won’t get as many arm touches, but there’s still the same amount of target area open for you, so really. You can do this.”

Daichi looks into the wide eyes of Bowl-Cut Kid across the strip and adds, “With any luck, he doesn’t fence other lefties much either.”

This prediction turns out to be extremely correct as the bout starts and both of them go for the arm touches they’re so used to against right-handed fencers, before realizing that their opponent’s arm is now on the other side and crashing into each other’s blades with a clanging sound.    
Satori is shouting things at Bowl-Cut from the sidelines, alternating between encouragement, tactical advice, and...anime references, it seems.

“Believe in me who believes in you! Use your height to overpower him!”

One of the Shiratorizawa alternates is cringing in second-hand embarrassment. 

Not to be outdone by a nerd, Daichi reminds Shouyou of his flying lunge thing once the score’s 2-1, Shiratorizawa. Shouyou does the flying lunge thing and brings the score to 2-2.

Bowl-Cut seems to be more technically competent than Shouyou, but he’s not as fast, and they’re both equally out of their depth against other lefties. The bout lasts for almost two minutes, but ends up going to Shiratorizawa, 5-3.

“All according to keikaku,” says Satori, and the alternate who was cringing earlier smacks him. 

“I apologize for him,” Reon, Shiratorizawa’s A-strip, adds. “He’s always like this, but we’re used to it.”

“I know I said no trash-talking,” Daichi whispers to Kei, “but...shut him up.”

“Thanks, Captain.” Kei does an ironic salute.

They’re checking bells and Kei says, “How does your mask fit over your Hedgehog haircut?”

Satori grins and flips his mask around in his hands to show that the bendy part in the back is bent all the way up. 

“He spiked it up this morning because he forgot we had a fencing tournament,” the alternate interjects.

“Thank you for your contribution, Taichi,” Satori says, still smiling.

The ref starts the bout and Satori yells “Omae wa mou shindeiru” before starting his attack, which made Daichi wish someone was recording this because, what the fuck. Like what the actual fuck. For a split-second, he wants to text Kuroo about it, before he remembers that Kuroo’s probably fencing right now and also he should be paying attention to the bout.

Anyway, Satori’s whole thing is he’s really good at anticipating his opponent’s moves and parrying before they can complete their attacks. He does that now, getting two points on Kei before the Karasuno boy can even blink. Daichi calls a time-out.

“Why haven’t you tried feinting yet?”

Kei turns slightly pink at this and says, “...I forgot.” That’s when Daichi remembers that for all his height and snark, Kei Tsukishima is still a kid who can get overwhelmed and distracted by weird anime reference spouting prep school boys.

“So here’s a reminder. Feint, Tsukki. Try to engage his blade more, that’s where your strength is.”

The bout resumes and it works. Kei locks Satori into a circle-parry warphole where they’re both just twirling their blades around each other until Kei lunges, breaks the circle and gets the touch. 2-1. 

“Don’t fuck with me, I have the power of god and anime on my side!” Satori yells on his next attack, but Kei just makes that “tch” sound he does and parries easily.

Satori seems to have gotten bored of the anime thing, because the next thing out of his mouth is “You’re really average, you know that?” The score’s 3-3.

“Yes,” Kei says, as they get another double touch. “But hey, you’re pretty average too, so that works out nicely, doesn’t it?”

For the last touch, Kei pushes as hard as he can, making Satori yelp from pain. But Kei wins. Kei wins and Daichi is very much relieved.

“People die when they are killed,” Satori says solemnly as they shake hands. A look of discomfort flashes across Kei’s face.

“Please stop,” Reon says, stepping onto the strip. “You’re embarrassing us in front of the public school kids.”

“Public school kids,” Daichi repeats flatly. “Alright then.”

Reon is an okay fencer, not great, not terrible. Does a lot of feints and one-two attacks, which Daichi can counter comfortably thanks to practicing against Kei. Daichi’s not sure why Reon’s the A-strip, because he seems to be on par with Satori as far as fencing ability goes. Maybe they did direct eliminations for strip order like Karasuno did. Maybe Satori’s usually the A-strip and got pushed down for being too annoying. Daichi would not be surprised.

Reon hits a bit too hard, but not painfully so. They get two doubles before Daichi notices that he’s faster than the Shiratorizawa kid.

So Daichi starts the next attack and lunges, hard, and gets a single touch. 3-2, now. Two more doubles and the public school boys will take the match. 

“Hey, while we’re at it,” Daichi says as they reset after the touch. “Can you explain to me why your school’s electric set-ups are so outdated? Surely you can afford newer ones, what with the 45,000 dollar tuition and all.” They’d fenced an away meet at Shiratorizawa once, and Daichi was blown away both by the luxuriousness of the campus (They had a lake! Their own lake! It looked like Hogwarts or something) and the fact that they had to provide extension cords for the electric reels because they weren’t compatible with some of the Karasuno fencer’s newer body cords.

Daichi doesn’t usually do the trash-talk thing, but, well, rich kids are not his favorite genre of kid. Reon lets the comment roll off him, though, and laughs as he advances. “The administration likes our soccer team a lot more than the fencing team, but we get by.”

Daichi pulls his arm back, parries quickly and extends. “I’m sure you do.”

The touch lands. 4-2.

He decides to make his last touch count, and does a flying lunge a few short seconds after the buzzer sounds. His flying lunge isn’t as impressive as Shouyou’s, but it’s still a bit longer than expected. Reon extends into Daichi’s advance, making the touch a double, but that’s not important. 5-3, bout goes to Karasuno.

“Good bout,” Daichi says.

“Good bout.”

 

Coach Ukai’s advice clicked for Shouyou, and he wins all four of his next bouts. His speed and ability to just keep moving are really incredible, Daichi thinks, and now that he’s figured out how to capitalize on both of those things and found his groove he’s unstoppable. Ukai finds them when they have just a few schools left to fence and tells Daichi that instead of switching Tadashi with Shouyou like they’d planned originally, they’re switching out Kei, moving Shouyou up to B-strip, and putting Tadashi in as C.

“That’s so convoluted,” Daichi says. 

“Kei doesn’t need more practice,” Ukai explains, scribbling something on the stack of spreadsheets attached to his clipboard. “The other two do.”

Ukai starts to walk away, then turns around and says, “Oh, and we’ll go with the original lineup against Nekoma, okay?”

Daichi nods. As long as the score sheets all have the correct names on them and the judges aren’t complaining, he’s fine with anything. And at this point, the day’s almost done, so whatever.

 

They’re so close to being done, saber is already done. Saber moves a lot faster than either foil or épée, so their bouts usually end first. From what Daichi’s seen in meets and things, saber fencing involves running at your opponent, smacking them with the side of your blade instead of stabbing them, and yelling as loudly as possible to convince the ref that you’d hit your opponent first and deserve the point. There’s a reason why saber’s consider the weird weapon.

Anyway, the saber bouts are done for the day so the rest of the épée bouts are happening in that gym. Karasuno’s boy’s épée team walks in and Daichi hears someone in the far left corner shout “WHAT TEAM?” He looks over and sees Kuroo, in red Nekoma socks and a jacket with his last name printed on it in neat blue letters, waiting for the rest of his squad to respond to his High School Musical reference. 

“WILDCATS!” 

Kuroo turns around and grins at Daichi, but their next bouts are on opposite ends of the gymnasium, so they don’t get a chance to talk for a while.

 

They go with the convoluted new lineup against Wakunan, which Karasuno totally wrecked at their meet a few weeks ago. Tadashi completely freezes up when the buzzer sounds, but Kei encourages him in his own weird way and when the score’s 2-0 against him Tadashi lunges and gets a beautiful mask touch on the Wakunan kid. Daichi actually applauds. Kei gives him a weird look.

“Excellent job, Tadashi! You’re doing great!” Daichi says.

“You’re overdoing it,” Kei says, glaring at the strip. “You don’t usually compliment people this much so it’s weird now.”

Shouyou yells “TADASHI that was really cool you did such a good job parrying that guy look at you go” and things of that nature, and Kei explains that it’s not weird when Shouyou does it because that’s what he’s like all the time. 

Daichi’s just relieved Tadashi still remembers how to attack instead of stand frozen in guard stance until someone else hits him. The bout ends 5-3, Wakunan, but it lasts almost the full 3 minutes and is considerably better than Daichi was expecting from the anxious sophomore. Tadashi sticks to his best friend like glue, and only started fencing in high school when Kei decided to join the team. He’s a hard worker, but there’s years of actual experience with fencing the kid simply does not have yet. Still, Daichi’s sure that by the time Tadashi’s a senior, he’ll be part of the starting lineup more often than not.

They beat Wakunan, and keep going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *tapes the word shiratorizawa over a real rich kid prep school I fenced in hs* Authenticity  
> up next: foil, probably  
> 


	9. a metaphorical open door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> save kageyama 2k17

The foil boys are fencing Fukurodani Academy, which is nice because Suga’s sort of friends with Keiji and Akinori. They chat pleasantly as Hizashi and the C-strip kid fence.

“Suga, do you know where you’re going for college?” Keiji asks abruptly.

He shrugs in response. “I know where I’ve _applied_ to for college, but I haven’t gotten any acceptances yet except for Rutgers, which is... not my top choice even though it would be the most financially sensible option. Most of my schools are in the Northeast. I’m going for pre-med.” Keiji nods.

“He’s bitter because Bokuto’s going to San Diego,” Akinori explains, smirking, and Keiji glares at him.

“I’m not bitter,” Keiji says, slightly less calmly than he usually says things,  “and anyway he hasn’t confirmed his acceptance yet so he might not even go.”

Suga gives him a sympathetic look, which makes Keiji glare even more.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Suga asks, and Keiji says that he’s fine and there’s nothing to talk about while looking as uncomposed as Suga’s ever seen him. He files that away for later.

“Alrighty then! So...did you hear Oikawa finally beat our foil golden boy?”

Keiji visibly relaxes at the subject change, and nods. 

“He put it on his snapchat story,” Akinori says. 

“Naturally.”

Suga loses to Akinori by two points, they shake hands, and it’s time for Keiji Akaashi and Tobio Kageyama to fence.

Keiji has recovered some of his composure and is as polite as ever when they shake hands, saying, “I look forward to fencing someone of your caliber and reputation,” which makes Tobio flush tomato-red. Up close like this, he can see that the Fukurodani boy is almost  _ pretty, _ with long eyelashes and wavy hair still fairly neat somehow after almost a full day of fencing. 

Distantly, Tobio thinks that now is a terrible time to have this realization. They check lamés and move into position, and Tobio’s relieved that he’s done this enough times that it’s almost automatic at this point.

Keiji is a good fencer. Tobio’s not sure what he was on about fencing “someone of his caliber” because he’s noticeably better than, say, Moniwa from earlier that day, and even Suga. He’s not Oikawa, yeah, but few people are. Tobio actually has to try for this one. 

Infighting in foil is unavoidable, for some reason. If you go for a touch and it doesn’t land the first time, instead of resetting completely and trying again it’s a lot easier to just move a little closer and keep stabbing. Keiji, Tobio discovers, is particularly prone to this, as the Fukurodani boy’s blade presses vertically against his stomach and bends backwards in an attempt to hit the electrified portion of his mask. Keiji’s front knee is also touching Tobio, and he can almost see the other boy’s face under the mask from how close together they are. 

_ Yes, this really is a terrible time to realize certain things,  _ Tobio thinks again, as Keiji gets the first touch. 1-0.

And then the next touch, it happens again, except worse, because Keiji managed to push him all the way to the end of the strip so he can’t retreat, and then their bell guards lock together so he can’t even move his blade much. 2-0, and Tobio’s face feels like it’s on fire.

“Start the attack, Tobio!” Suga calls from the sidelines, which is a perfectly obvious solution he really should’ve figured out himself. He just nods, and then the buzzer sounds and he does what his upperclassman told him to do. 

Keiji parries and attempts a riposte, but Tobio jumps back in time to leave the other boy off-balance, and he stumbles a bit. He lunges and hits, finally scoring a point. He can kind of breathe again. 

He carefully does his best to extend his arm as much as possible, twisting his wrist so he’s fencing with his hand pushing Keiji away. You’re not supposed to hold that position for very long, it’s bad for the wrist or fingers or something, but it seems like the best option right now. 

The score’s 2-2 and then Keiji drops to the ground, lunging so low he’s practically kneeling to get under Tobio’s guard. Tobio moves his front foot back and then leans over and actually hits Keiji on the back of his lamé, right above the name AKAASHI printed in blue. The ref rules the touch as valid a moment later.

It’s not like he hasn’t lost any bouts all day. He’s still a freshman, he still makes mistakes, or overexerts himself or, in one particularly embarrassing bout against a school with ugly pink socks, he just straight up tripped over nothing and fell flat on his mask-covered face. But losing against Keiji wouldn’t just be embarrassing, it’d be disappointing, because Keiji had said he was looking forward to fencing someone better than him. So, Tobio tries to be better.

The next time they get stuck infighting, Tobio makes sure he has room to retreat out of the situation and does so immediately, jumping back and arching forward in a very uncomfortable position that gets him the touch. 4-3, and with 30 seconds left on the clock.

Maybe he can end it quickly, Tobio thinks as they bounce back and forth for a bit. The buzzer sounds and he takes two steps and then does a flying lunge, closing the distance between them instantly and shoving his blade into Keiji’s sternum. 5-3, bout, and Tobio has enough time to go to the bathroom and stick his head under the faucet for a few minutes before he has to fence again.

He takes off his mask and hopes the redness of his face can be attributed to the exercise. Keiji’s a little flushed, maybe, but looks pretty unruffled, which is not fair in the least.

“Good bout,” Keiji says, smiling politely as they shake hands. His hand is warm and soft and  _ why is Tobio thinking about this.  _

“Good bout,” he says automatically, looking over at Suga on the sidelines instead of making eye contact with his opponent, and lets go as soon as it’s socially acceptable to do so. Suga is beaming like a proud parent when he locks eyes with Tobio and his expression changes from pleased to curious and questioning. It is at that moment that Tobio remembers Suga is pretty much psychic.

“I need to. Bathroom,” he says, and escapes.

Suga comes in when he’s washing his face and says, “Are you okay?”

“FINE.” He stares at the floor, heat rushing into his face again.

“.....do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Suga leans against the edge of the sink two away from Tobio. “Are you good to fence Nekoma? We’re switching the strip order for Nekoma anyway, because I have more experience fencing Kenma specifically, in case you remember.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

“If you ever need to talk to anyone about...things...my metaphorical door is always open.”

“Your what?”

Suga rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “It means I’m here for you, Kageyama.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

They walk back to the gym, and Tobio thinks maybe he’ll get away without a very uncomfortable conversation. Maybe he can suppress these weird feelings until a more convenient time, when he’s not busy trying to win fencing bouts. No such luck.

“Keiji does that to everyone, by the way,” Suga says, offhandedly, when they’re almost at the gym door.

“Does what?” Tobio says blankly. “Infighting?”

Suga turns around and smiles, but it’s not the friendly caring upperclassman smile he was using early, and more of a smug, “I know something you don’t” kind of smile. “That, too.”

He pats Tobio on the arm then, and says, “Like I said, I’m here for you if you need to talk.”

“I don’t need to talk about anything,” Tobio sputters out, but then Hitoka comes running over with her clipboard and the conversation, thankfully, ends there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (fencing pretty people is a very special kind of difficult)  
> sorry this is so short I'm still finals  
> probably like 2-3 more chapters after this? we'll see


	10. finally

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy birthday kuroo

Lev and Shouyou are standing across from each other on the strip, waiting for the ref to start the bout. The Battle of the Trash Heap or whatever, Boy’s Tournament Edition, part 1 of 3. Lev is a foot taller than Hinata and is fascinated by this.

“You’re even shorter than Morisuke,” he exclaims as they check bells. Shouyou looks like he’s trying his best to avoid stabbing Lev before the bout actually starts.

“Do you have a lot of experience fencing lefties, Lev?” Shoyou asks instead, and Lev shakes his head.

“Not until today, really!” he says cheerfully. “But I’ve fenced a few lefties today, and won a few times, so I’m not worried.”

Shouyou shoots Daichi a panicked look. Daichi just tells him “You’ll be fine,” again, and then the buzzer sounds.

Kuroo grins. Daichi knows that grin, because that’s exactly the face he himself makes when whoever’s up against Shouyou realizes he’s left-handed. 

“What do you know that we don’t?” Daichi asks him, jumping straight to the point.

Kuroo keeps smiling, and the tips of his ears turn pink. “Have you seen Lev fence before? No, he was out sick the day of that meet, so probably not. He’s...tall.”

“I can see that,” Daichi says, rolling his eyes. “So what? That one school has a 7-foot tall freshman and he barely knows how to advance.”

“With arms like Lev’s, he barely even needs to advance,” Kuroo replies, and they both watch in silence as Shouyou attempts his trademark flying lunge move only for Lev to take half a step back, lean over him, and hit him on the back. The buzzer sounds and touch goes to Nekoma.

Kuroo grins.

Daichi is...out of advice. Lev’s form is atrocious, his guard is too high so Shouyou couldn’t possibly hit his arm the way lefties usually do, and his knees aren’t bent far enough. His stance should probably be a lot lower than standard, actually, to accomodate the height difference between him and his opponent, but, as has been previously established, Lev Haiba does not know what he’s doing. And yet, he keeps. Getting. Points. His footwork is jerky and hesitant but he extends his arm like a whip, slicing through the air and landing on target in a smooth, fluid motion that might’ve been better suited to saber. The score is 4-2 and Daichi wants to kick a wall. This is just unfair. Kuroo, meanwhile, is cackling next to him.

“What did you even tell this kid. He’s been on the team for what, two months now and still doesn’t know how to stand en garde? You’ve been slacking, Kuroo,” Daichi says.

“Hey, Yaku’s been coaching him on footwork before and after practice a few times a week, and he finally joined a club outside of school a few weeks ago. You should’ve seen Lev in November, now  _ that _ was a mess.”

“I shudder to imagine it,” Daichi says, and turns his attention back to the strip. Shouyou figured out a strategy for this match: go even lower and faster so Lev doesn’t have time to reach down and hit him. He advances so fast he’s practically running, and hits Lev on the knee. Touch to Karasuno, 4-3. 

“THERE WE GO,” Daichi shouts, but he must have jinxed it or something because the next touch right after is a double, Shouyou going for the leg again while Lev just jabs him in his upper arm. 5-4, bout to Nekoma.

“I want a rematch,” Shouyou says as they shake hands, looking furious.

“Maybe we’ll be fencing each other at Districts,” Lev says, smiling cheerfully. “You’re pretty good!”

“You’re not supposed to tell me that if you beat me by being tall!” Shouyou says, but he looks pleased with the praise anyway.

“Stop looking so smug,” Daichi says to Kuroo. “You didn’t even do anything.”

“Clearly it was with the help of my expert guidance that our guy beat your guy,” Kuroo fires back.

“Oh, speaking of expert guidance,” Nobuyuki says, as he clips his body cord to the electric reel. “There’s a weekend intensive thing the weekend before Districts at Third Gym fencing club. It’s ten minutes away from the fencing supply store, so like, forty minute drive from Karasuno, probably. The épée coach there’s super good, so we’re all going.” He presses the springy tip of his blade with his fingers, but it doesn’t light up. He presses it a few more times. Still nothing. “Fuck. Hey, Tetsu--”

“Here,” Kuroo passes his spare épée to Nobuyuki without even blinking. He plugs it in and checks the tip, and it lights up. There’s a collective sigh of relief.

“Thank god it’s not the cord, right?” Nobu says, and then he and Kei check bells and everything seems to be functioning properly, thank goodness.

“Tadashi’s cord stopped working right after his first bout, but we have a bunch of extras, so it worked out okay,” Daichi says. He gets the urge to knock on wood all of a sudden. It’s weird that they’ve managed to get through a full day of fencing with only one real technical malfunction on their side. Good weird, but still.

The bout starts, and it’s almost relaxing how standard it is. Nobuyuki Kai is solid, dependable, and a few inches shorter than Kei, so he doesn’t try anything weird. He’s not another Lev. He’s almost too solid, really. Kei keeps trying to feint, but the Nekoma boy always just steps back, parries, and hits.

Coach Ukai comes over and watches the score go from 1 to 2 to 3-0, Nekoma, before he finally calls a time-out and tells Kei to switch it up.   
“Fine, I’ll go for a toe-touch,” Kei says, deadpan. 

“Don’t do that,” Ukai and Daichi say in unison. 

Toe touches are always a high risk move, because feet are not large target areas and you hit the floor more often than you hit your opponent’s foot. People go for toe touches if they’re really bored in a practice match, or cocky little shits. So, Kei, all the time. (He’s actually better than most people at toe touches by this point, but it’s still not something he should try when the score’s 3-0.)

“Just do something other than feinting,” Ukai adds.

“You told me to feint more against Tendou,” Kei says. 

“Does Kai look like Tendou to you? Different people have different strengths and weaknesses, Tsukishima, you have to adapt to each situation.”

Kei nods, and when the bout resumes he lets Nobuyuki attack first, then parries and gets a double touch. 4-1.

Kei makes a “tch” sound under his mask, and when the buzzer sounds again, he jumps straight into a ballestra- a very fast step-lunge kind of move that gives him enough distance to extend and land a hit on the Nekoma boy’s arm before he even has a chance to move. 4-2.

He gets one more point with a very simple and basic advance, extend, lunge combination. The final touch of the bout is another double, Nobuyuki extending into Kei’s torso as he hits Nobu in the arm. 5-4, Nekoma, again.

They shake hands and Nobuyuki gives Ukai the details for the weekend fencing intensive. And so, it’s time for Daichi and Kuroo to fence.

It’s been a while since Daichi’s seen Kuroo from this angle, checking his weapon’s tip at the white en garde line four meters in front of him. Their bouts were always pretty close, the two of them fairly well-matched in skill.

“Fencers come forward, check bells,” the ref says. Daichi kneels to let Kuroo test his first.

“Oh, your blade is really pretty,” Daichi says, noticing the gradient effect. Daichi’s blade is just plain gray metal, the bell guard all scratched up with use.

“Thanks, I know.”

Daichi stands up and checks his tip on Kuroo’s bell guard, and they get back into en garde position. 

“Fencers ready? Fence!”

“While you were busy being heterosexual, I studied the blade,” Kuroo says, in a tone of voice that implied he’d been mentally rehearsing this line for at least a few minutes beforehand. 

And Daichi just starts laughing. 

“What’s so funny, Sawamura?” Kuroo asks. He starts his attack, taking a step and a half before Daichi, in what could be considered kind of a dick move, breaks his concentration by saying,“Who said anything about me being heterosexual?”

Kuroo freezes, wobbling off-balance halfway through his advance.

_ I guess I broke Kuroo. Sorry, everyone _ , Daichi thinks for a second, and then advances and hits him. In the face. Not too hard, but because Kuroo is already standing in a weird position, he stumbles backwards and almost falls. 1-0 to Karasuno.

They reset.

“Are you serious?” Kuroo asks him when they’re back on guard. His voice is muffled by the mask.

“I swear to God, Tetsurou, do you really want to have this conversation right now?” Daichi snaps back. “After the bout, okay?”

Unsurprisingly, Kuroo is distracted for the next few touches, and soon it’s 3-0 to Karasuno. Nobuyuki sighs disapprovingly at him from the sidelines.

“What do you usually say in these circumstances, Tetsurou?” Nobuyuki says.

Kuroo sighs. “Getcha head in the game,” he grumbles.

“Well?”

“I’ll get my head in the game.” It’s a little embarrassing, because Kuroo has actually been doing fairly well today. He’s won most of his bouts so far, including beating Daishou and kicking Satori Tendou’s fucking obnoxious ass first thing after the lunch break. Nekomata even told him that if he fenced like that at Districts he’ll qualify for Individuals this year, but now that there’s a miniscule possibility of his crush liking him back, he can’t focus on anything else. Amazing how the captain of the Nekoma Boy’s épée squad is functionally identical to a 12-year-old girl. He can already see Kenma’s patented Kuroo-specific expression of “disappointed, but not surprised.”

Fencing is annoying because you can’t really do it without thinking and win. There’s a reason some people call it “physical chess,” why fencers for the most part tend to be huge nerds. The sequence of moves in a one-on-one bout emphasizes precision over strength. You can’t win by being physically stronger and overpowering your opponent that way. You have to win by being faster, and thinking further ahead, and knowing when to attack and defend, all by yourself. 

That’s what Kuroo has to remind himself of when they resume fencing for the fourth time that bout.  _ Focus on the sword pointed at you and how far away it is, not Daichi’s thighs. _

Daichi tends to fence defensively, letting his opponent start the attack and scoring touches when they pull back or drop their guard. So Kuroo decides to draw him out into attacking to see if he’ll leave himself open that way. The two of them go back and forth for a bit, neither one deciding to start the attack, until finally Daichi takes two quick steps and shortens the distance between them. There. Kuroo lunges low and jabs up and lands a touch on the underside of Daichi’s arm. Point to Nekoma.

“Troy Bolton, is that you?” Daichi quips, before lunging and landing a touch lightly and cleanly on Kuroo’s thigh. 4-1. “Actually, I’ve been wondering, how many times have you watched High School Musical, and is it just the first one you’re obsessed with or have you seen all three?”

“No comment,” Kuroo says.

(The real answer is, Kuroo’s never seen any of the High School Musical movies all the way through. He just likes the fact that their mascot and school colors are almost the same as Nekoma and how quotable the songs are, and also annoying Kenma. He feels like telling Daichi all of this would be kind of disappointing.)

The bout ends with a double touch, both of them rushing to hit each other in the chest without parrying first. 5-2, Karasuno.

“That’s probably the least amount of points you’ve ever gotten against me in a standard bout,” Daichi says as they shake hands. “Are you feeling alright?”

Kuroo inhales deeply and says, “Can we go talk somewhere more private?”

Daichi looks at him for a second and nods. 

The foil are still fencing in the other gym, so Kuroo drags Daichi to the vending machines and says, “So.”

“So.”

Kuroo opens his mouth. Kuroo closes his mouth. Where does his understanding of language and how humans interact with other humans vanish off to every time he’s face to face with Daichi Sawamura? Why is this his life?

“Are you guys gonna go to the weekend intensive thing?” he ends up blurting out, because it seems like a safer sort of question than any of the ones he really wants to ask.

“Maybe, if I can get off work that weekend and corrall the  _ children  _ into going with me because god knows the underclassmen need it.” Daichi looks at the vending machine selections like he’s genuinely considering getting something, even though he doesn’t have his wallet with him and all the options suck. Maybe he feels kind of awkward about this conversation too. “I’ll let you know if it works out.”

He looks back at Kuroo, and Kuroo feels kind of lightheaded and feverish, but in a good way.

“Nekoma’s near New York City, right?” Daichi asks. “I’m going up to Manhattan next weekend for a college interview. We could meet there, if you wanted. Get something to eat.”

“Like on a date?” Kuroo says quickly. His voice cracks a little on the word “date,” but that’s the least of his concerns.

And Daichi smiles. “Yeah. Yeah, like on a date.”

Kuroo lets out a sigh of relief and laughs a little. “I really wasn’t expecting you to like me back,” he admits. “Sorry I’ve been so weird today. God.”

“I can’t believe people think you’re cool,” Daichi says.

“You like me.”

“Yup.”   
“You actually like me.”

“We’ve established this.”

“You  _ actually _ \--” and then Kuroo doesn’t say anything else, because Daichi grabs him by the shoulders and yanks him down into a kiss.

“Oh,” Kuroo says, very very quietly. And kisses him again.


	11. don't go to white castle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tournament ends, time to go home

The foil boys finish up last. Suga’s fencing Kenma, which is nice. He and Kenma went to the same week-long fencing camp the summer before, and practiced against each other a lot, so Suga knows what to expect. He’s even beaten Kenma in practice a few times, possibly because Kenma wasn’t trying very hard. Kenma spent considerably more time playing video games at that fencing camp than he probably should have, but he’s still a good fencer. Thoughtful, precise, and fucking weird. 

“It’s nice to see you again,” Suga says when they shake hands, and Kenma nods once.

It’s said that you’re supposed to know the rules before you break them. Kenma knows proper fencing technique better than almost anyone else in the high school bracket, so when he decides to do weird shit, it’s fun to watch. 

Suga asks Kiyoko to record the bout.

 

A few strips away, Oikawa’s getting ready to fence Kenjiro Shirabu. Seijoh’s épée squad finished earlier, so the other upperclassmen are all standing around Oikawa’s side of the strip and cheering him on by making fun of him, as per usual. Oikawa’s been on a winning streak for the past few match-ups, so in a sudden fit of confidence he pulls Hajime closer and says, “Hey, if I win this bout, will you go out with me?”

Hajime’s face slowly turns completely pink and he says, “We’ll see. Focus on the bout, Shittykawa.”

Oikawa smiles. He lets go of Hajime’s shirt and walks up to check weapons. He can hear Makki asking what the fuck was that all about, but he feels lighter and happier already, and he’s ready to kick Kenjiro’s ass.

 

The first few touches, Kenma barely moves, unwilling to expend more energy then necessary. Suga understands that. It’s been a long day for all of them, really. He gets the first few touches without a lot of effort, because Kenma’s parries are just off enough and just weak enough that Suga can power through them and land the hit. When it’s 3-0, Karasuno, Kenma stands up straighter, rolls his shoulders back, and goes into a low guard stance. Like, really low. He’s practically crouching. His advance reminds Suga of a crab walk. Because he’s so low though, Kenma can go underneath Suga’s guard and get a hit in that way.

Suga tries to parry his blade, but it’s coming at him from a weird angle because of how Kenma’s standing, so even after the parry Kenma ripostes and gets the touch. 3-1.

The next touch, Suga lunges at Kenma, and Kenma literally leans back to dodge it. Which isn’t illegal, but it is rare. He leans back and twist his torso sideways like a movie spy in a laser beam maze, and sticks his weapon out without even looking at Suga. The buzzer goes off, and touch goes to Kenma.

“How did you come up with that?” Suga asks him.

Kenma just shrugs. “I have to do something to make this interesting for me.”

Kenma also does weird things with distance. His advances, Suga notices after a while, aren’t all the same length, which is usually a sign of poor control but in Kenma’s case means the exact opposite. A fencer should know how long their stride is, how many advances it takes to cover the length of the strip, and how many steps away their opponent is at all times. Kenma knows all of these things so well he can take huge steps that are practically lunges, and tiny steps, and still be in range to score. He lunges at Suga from way too close, and Suga jumps back without thinking before realizing that by jumping back he made the distance between them the ideal length for Kenma to extend and hit him square in the chest.

The bout ends at 5-4, Kenma, after going for two full minutes.

“Good bout!” Suga says as they shake hands. He hopes he doesn’t sound too patronizing.

“Good bout,” Kenma says, with zero emotion in his voice. “I’ll see you guys at Districts.”

That is already more politeness than Suga was expecting from Kenma Kozume, so he beams and says, “Of course!”

 

Oikawa wins his bout, and doesn’t gloat about it for once, even if he did beat Shiratorizawa’s best foil fencer. He shakes hands with Kenjiro quickly and turns to the side, where Hajime’s waiting. Oikawa beams.

“So,” he says.

“So,” Hajime echoes. He looks embarrassed, almost. “We’ll talk later, okay? We need to get out of here before rush hour.”

“For the record,” he adds as they’re leaving the gym, “You did well today.”

 

The tournament ends not with a bang, but with a spreadsheet. A few spreadsheets actually. There’s no big elaborate closing ceremony or anything like that, the officials just total up the scores and run them through some algorithms to determine standings for each weapon, then give those numbers back to the coaches, and everyone changes out of their uncomfortable fencing whites into sweats and gets back on their buses.

For Karasuno, the end of the tournament means a screaming match over where they should stop for dinner. Coach Ukai decides to do the debriefing when they get back to Karasuno High School instead of right when they leave, so he stands up at the front of the bus and asks everyone where they want to eat and all hell breaks loose.

“WHITE CASTLE! WHITE CASTLE! WHITE CASTLE!” Ryuu and Noya chant.

“Literally anything but White Castle,” Asahi says, eyes haunted by dark memories of past White Castle meals.

Chikara suggests Panera Bread, because an exit sign on the freeway said there was a Panera Bread just a few miles further along the road.

“BUT YOU CAN’T BUILD A CASTLE OUT OF SLIDER BOXES AT PANERA BREAD,” Ryuu yells. 

“Is that the only reason you want to go to White Castle?” Chikara asks.

“It’s an amazing reason to go to White Castle! Hey, newbies, gather around and look at this photo of me and Noya with our slider box castle from last year.” He holds his phone up and the freshmen admire the photo. It looks more like a pile of boxes than a castle, but it is a lot of boxes. An impressive quantity of boxes. Asahi looks ill at the very thought of those White Castle sliders.

They end up going to Panera Bread.

The Panera Bread is pretty empty, at 6:30 pm on a Sunday. The team shoves a few tables together, and talk about their days.

“Asahi, you have to tell the not-saber people about the jump-parry!” Noya insists with his mouth full.

Asahi looks down and laughs a little, embarrassed. “It’s not that big of a deal, really,” he says, to which the other saber boys (Ryuu, Noya and Chikara) all gasp in mock-outrage.

“Fine then, if you don’t wanna tell it I’m gonna tell it,” Noya declares, and then Suga says “No, Chikara should, he’s the only one of you who can tell a complete story without getting sidetracked or carried away in the process.” So Chikara puts his sandwich down, clears his throat and begins the Epic Tale of the Jump-Parry.

“So, Asahi’s fencing one of the last bouts of his high school career, he’s on a winning streak, he decides to do something a little crazy. He backs up a bit and then starts galloping towards the center of the strip. I wanna say about 1 yard away from the opposing fencer, he flunged so hard that he basically jumped up in the air. Mid-air, he held his blade in parry 2, vertically on his left side, tip pointed towards the floor. He parried the attack and then riposted to his opponent’s head. All you could hear were two loud clangs. And then everyone yelling.”

Asahi keeps staring at the table. “I won the bout, so I guess it turned out okay.”

“It was like straight out of a movie, dude! You looked SO COOL,” Noya insists.

Karasuno’s saber boys are all very good. Asahi and Noya are nationally ranked, and Ryuu doesn’t do many tournaments outside of the school team but still wins a lot of his bouts. Daichi likes to remind himself of this fact every time Noya and Ryuu nearly get the team kicked out of a dining establishment for doing things like standing on a table and trying to crown Asahi as King of the Jump Parry. With a crown made of napkins.

_ We need them to win Districts. We need them to win Districts,  _ Daichi thinks to himself, like a mantra.   
They manage to leave the Panera Bread without being told to do so by the staff, which is a victory in Daichi’s opinion. On the bus back to school, the freshmen and managers sit in the back with the equipment and fall asleep, while the troublemakers (Noya and Ryuu on one side of the aisle, Daichi, Suga and Asahi on the other, and the other juniors in the seat behind them) cluster together in the front few rows and play Never Have I Ever except without alcohol. The first person to get out has to do ten push-ups before the start of their next practice.

“Never have I ever,” Ryuu says, smirking pointedly at Suga, “hooked up with a fencer from another school at a tournament.”

Suga gasps theatrically. Out of everyone playing the game, he’s the closest to losing at the moment. “This is clearly targeted towards a specific person and we SAID nothing overly specific allowed in Never Have I Ever!”

Daichi thinks of messy hair in his fists and a warm mouth pressed against his own and asks, “Uh, what counts as hooking up? Like, for the purposes of this question.”

The fencers go silent. For a moment, all you can hear is the whirr of the bus along the road.

Then Noya breaks it by whisper-shouting, “Daichi, with all due respect,  _ what the actual fuck?” _

“It was Kuroo, right? Did you make out with Kuroo? Because if you did Tooru owes me a froyo,” Suga jumps in, already typing something into his phone furiously.

“...A froyo? Really?”

“It is kind of cold for froyos now, huh. Maybe I can convince him to get me donuts instead,” he replies, distractedly. “But hey, good for you!”

Ryuu and Noya are stunned into silence, a rare sight. “...What was Oikawa’s bet?” Ryuu asks after a few moments, and Suga waves his hand to indicate that it wasn’t that important.

“He had no faith in you, Daichi. Like, Kuroo’s super obvious about his feelings but Tooru didn’t think you were gonna actually do anything about it today. And then you did so. Good job.”

Daichi feels slightly condescended to but lets it slide this time. The guys pester him into details about what went down, and then Asahi remembers they were supposed to be playing Never Have I Ever and that Suga was about to lose.

This is probably Daichi’s favorite part of the whole thing, really. Hanging out with everyone, laughing, looking out through the frost-covered window at the quiet dark suburban landscape.

When they were about 15 minutes away from the school, Ukai tells everyone to call their parents to pick them up if they needed to, and then stands up at the front of the bus to tell them how they did. 

“According to the preliminary rankings, all three of our teams placed higher overall than we did last year, so well done, guys. Everyone fenced well, especially our newcomers, and I’m proud of you. This is the last time you’ll have to be up so early until Districts next month, so enjoy that. Go home, get some rest. Do your homework. The usual. Help the managers unload the bus first though.”

The bus pulls into Karasuno’s parking lot, and as they spill out onto the sidewalk and grab their gear from the back of the bus, it starts snowing. Properly snowing, too, great big wet clumps of snowflakes stuck together that will probably stick to the cold ground.

Daichi’s phone vibrates.

 

Tetsurou Kuroo: Is it snowing where you are yet?? It’s snowing here

Tetsurou Kuroo: wait are u even home yet idk how far away karasuno is but I think far right

Tetsurou Kuroo: anyway get home safe! Enjoy the snow! 

Tetsurou Kuroo: <3

 

His face burns as he types back, “Just got back to school. Yup, it’s snowing. Hopefully school’s gonna close tomorrow.”

After a moment, he sends a “<3” too. 

  
  


Daichi throws his and Suga’s fencing bags into the trunk of his car and makes a face at the sky. The wind was picking up and even though there shouldn’t be much traffic at 7:30 on a Sunday night, it was still going to be an annoying trip. “I have to drive home in this,” he says, and Suga laughs at him. 

“Lighten up, Dai. It’s pretty, isn’t it? And we might have a snow day tomorrow if it keeps up like this!”

He looks up at the snow falling from the inky black sky, turning orange from the street lamps, at Tobio and Shoyou competing to see who can catch more snowflakes in their mouth and Asahi and Ryuu helping the manager girls carry boxes of equipment back to the fencing team room. At the snowflakes melting in everyone’s hair. 

“Yeah, it’s pretty,” Daichi says.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's a wrap! thanks for reading I hope u had fun  
> fun fencing fact the jump parry story is a real thing that happened to my team's boy's saber captain  
> I have some ideas for spinoffs in this universe but it's gonna be a while until I get around to any of them lol

**Author's Note:**

> Lamé = metal vest thing foil fencers wear to verify whether or not a touch is on target. I'm gonna talk about electric fencing more in chapter 2 so bear with me  
> Bout = one round of fencing  
> Strip = the thin rectangle of floor upon which you fence. Also called a piste but not by me  
> I made hinata a lefty bc I want him to win sometimes. that's it that's the reason  
> if anything else confuses you please leave a comment so I can clear it up!


End file.
